Public utilities provide electric, gas, water or telephone service to customers in a specified area. Utilities have a duty to provide safe and adequate service on reasonable terms to anyone who lives within the service area on without discriminating between customers. Because most utilities operate in near monopolistic conditions, they can be heavily regulated by local, state, and federal authorities. Generally, the local and state agencies are called Public Service Commissions (PSC) or Public Utility Commissions (PUC). Municipal Utilities and Rural Electric Cooperatives may be unregulated though.
Pearl River is a hamlet, in the Town of Orangetown Rockland County, New York, United States located east of Nauraushaun; north of the state of New Jersey; south of Nanuet and west of Blauvelt. The population was 15,553 at the 2000 census. Pearl River is also the site of One Blue Hill Plaza, Rockland County's first commercial skyscraper with 21 stories of office space. Pearl River is 17 miles north of Manhattan, and north of the New Jersey border and the first (traveling north) of three New York stops on New Jersey Transit's Pascack Valley Line. In 1906, Ernest Lederle, a former New York City commissioner founded Lederle Laboratories on a 99-acre (400,000 m) farm which now encompasses 550 acres (2.2 km) and 40 buildings employing 3,200 workers.