My water got turned off once. I paid my bill and it got turned back on. It didn’t require UN intervention.
When I moved back here from out of state I rented a house. I was surprised when I had to appear in person and show ID to get all of the utilities turned on.
Turns out that the prior tenants in the house were deadbeats who skipped out on a bunch of bills.
After about a year a crew came one day and dug up my driveway. They did some work on some piping and then poured a new one. I thought “cool, I get a new driveway and it cost me nothing”.
Then a few days later I got a frantic call at work from my wife. Some guy was out there turning off our water. I had to leave, go home to talk to him and try to straighten things out.
Turns out that when those prior tenants got behind in their bill the water company put in a shutoff notice. But when they came out to turn it off they found the valve under the driveway was broken and they could not. So they put in a work order to fix it.
A couple of years later after I was living there that work order finally rose to the top of the pile. They came out and replaced the valve (and with it, the driveway). And a couple of days later the shutoff guy dutifully showed up to do his job.
This is why you do NOT want huge bureaucracies running on autopilot (see: US Federal Government)