The company with the excess pollution is given an option that doesn't involve closing down or making a massive capital investment. The other company is rewarded by being able to recover some of its initial investment in the clean technology as well as its operating costs. Their solution, endorsed by the DNR, was eventually written into Wisconsin law. Being asked to help with policy issues gives us a fantastic opportunity to work on problems that matter to everyone. Joeres also worked on the implementation of the 1986 Wisconsin acid rain law, the first major example of such a law in the country.
Acid rain is caused primarily by emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide.
Eighty percent of the sulfur dioxide emissions in Wisconsin come from coal-burning electric utility plants. The 1986 law required the electric utilities to reduce their sulfur dioxide emissions to half the 1980 level by 1992. The Council uses a highly cooperative effort to maintain the balance between economic and environmental health. The law created the Acid Deposition Research Council to oversee those funds and to ensure that research into the effects of acid rain was carried out in a scientific manner. We have also been successful getting research funds from the federal government and private institutions to match those we received from the utilities and the state government.