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.
East Pittsburgh is a borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, about 11 miles (18 km) southeast of the confluence of the Monongahela and the Allegheny rivers at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The population in 1900 stood at 2,883, and in 1910, at 5,615. As of the 2000 census, the borough population was 2,017, having fallen from 6,079 in 1940. George Westinghouse erected large works there which supplied equipment to the great power plants at Niagara Falls and for the elevated and rapid-transit systems of New York. Nearby, the George Westinghouse Bridge over Turtle Creek is a prominent fixture in that area, which is very near Braddock, Pennsylvania.