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.
Mingo Junction is a village in Jefferson County, Ohio, United States, along the Ohio River. The population was 3,631 at the 2000 census. In 1900, its only manufacturing plant was a steel mill owned by Carnegie Steel Company. Past population figures are: 1900, 2,954; 1910, 4,049; 1940, 5,192. Mingo Junction is part of the Weirton–Steubenville, WV-OH Metropolitan Statistical Area. The Mingo Indian tribe once had a settlement at the location of the present day village, which is the source of its name. Originally known as Mingo Bottom, it was the starting point for the ill-fated Crawford expedition against hostile Indians in 1782, during the American Revolutionary War.