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.
Lavalette is an unincorporated town in Wayne County, West Virginia, in the United States. Lavalette is located at the intersection of West Virginia Route 152 and West Virginia Route 75, eight miles south of Huntington. The town is near Beech Fork Lake, a popular location for boating and fishing, and Twelvepole Creek. Lavalette was named after Lavalette Miller, the daughter of a Norfolk & Western Railway official, as a wedding gift. Lavalette is a part of the Huntington-Ashland, WV-KY-OH, Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2000 census, the MSA had a population of 288,649. Lavalette has two 18-hole public golf courses - Sugarwood Golf Club and Twin Silos of Lavalette. Lavalette also has a 24-hour paid EMS ambulance service with two squads and a volunteer fire department with four engine companies.