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.
Whittier was a small town, founded in 1881 by Clark Whittier when he purchased 60,000 acres (240 km²) of land in the area, and is now an unincorporated community in western North Carolina. It was incorporated as a town from 1887 to 1933, when the Great Depression took the lumber industry boom (which began in the 1900s) down with it. The town was located on the railroad and the Tuckasegee River, between Bryson City downstream to the west, and Dillsboro upstream to the southeast. It straddles the county line between Jackson County to its east and Swain County to the west.