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.
Vails Gate is a hamlet in Orange County, New York, United States. The population was 3,319 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area as well as the larger New York–Newark–Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA Combined Statistical Area. Vails Gate is in the south part of the Town of New Windsor, located on Route 32. It is defined largely by the junction of that highway with Routes 94 and 300, a busy commercial center which has the ZIP code 12584. Part of that also spills into adjacent regions of the Town of Cornwall to the south.