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.
Reeder is a city in Adams County, North Dakota in the United States. The population was 181 at the 2000 census. Reeder was founded in 1907 along the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad and named after E. O. Reeder, the railroad's assistant chief engineer. Reeder is a stop along the old Yellowstone Trail, the first transcontinental automobile highway in the Northern United States. A strain of wheat developed by the North Dakota Agriculture Experiment Station has been named after the town.