Options for Financing Acid Rain Controlst

Over the past decade, the phenomenon of acid deposition, commonly referred to as "acid rain,"' has been subject to growing scientific research as well as widespread media coverage. Such attention has fostered a corresponding increase in public awareness as well as acrimonious debate about the extent to which acid rain constitutes an environmental risk requiring prompt regulatory action to mitigate or prevent its effects. As a result, acid deposition has been transformed from a relatively unnoticed area of scientific inquiry into one of the paramount environmental issues of the 1980s. Acid rain first emerged as a public policy concern at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm when Swedish scientists asserted that precipitation acidity attributable to sulfur dioxide (SO 2) emissions from man-made sources, primarily industry and utilities, was causing adverse ecological and human health effects.2 Largely in response to the Swedish study, the Norwegian Interdisciplinary Research Program, the SNSF Project, was started in 1972. It focused on establishing the effects of acid precipitation on forests and fish. 3 In 1972, acting under