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.
Sewanee is an unincorporated town in Franklin County, Tennessee, United States, treated by the U.S. Census as a census-designated place (CDP). The population was 2,361 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Tullahoma, Tennessee Micropolitan Statistical Area. Sewanee lies on the mountainous Cumberland Plateau in the southeastern part of Middle Tennessee. It is best known as the home of The University of the South, founded by Episcopal Bishop-General Leonidas Polk (C.S.A. ) and for the Sewanee Review, published there continuously since 1892. Nearby St. Andrew's-Sewanee School, one of the oldest boarding-day schools in the South, is a private school for grades 6 through 12 with a student population of 100 boarding and 150 day students. The Templeton Library, which is to be the repository of the papers of financier Sir John Templeton, a native of the area, was recently built there.