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.
Deep Water, also known historically as Deepwater, is an unincorporated town on the Kanawha River in Fayette County, West Virginia, United States. It is best known as the starting point of the Deepwater Railway founded in 1898 by William N. Page, which was merged to create the Virginian Railway in 1907. Located near the head of navigation of the Kanawha River just a short distance downstream from Kanawha Falls, it may have been named for that reason. However, according to local legend as recounted by H. Reid in The Virginian Railway (Kalmbach, 1961), it was named by Squire James Galsepy Kincaid and other locals on a rainy day in 1871 as a commentary on the standing groundwater outside the new post office along Loup Creek.