[Carry_Okie]

I have no doubt of this story. It’s what happens when bureaucrats grab legalese as twisted through their fantasies. The key word here is “harass,” which is not permitted under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The term then conflates with anything one chooses to deem harassment. Is it mild annoyance?Is it any reaction at all? The thresholds become a matter of virtue signaling, with metrics increasingly minute. The more minute the granularity the more it costs and the more insane become the means of making that determination.

I am reminded of the last time a process I had invented needed an air quality permit. The minute threshold was one pound of VOC per day. It didn’t matter if the process machinery was the size of a city block or a kid with a spray can. Worse, the bigger the process the more likely it would fail, but for the error in the test! I determined that the error in measurement was big enough that if I tested the process enough times, would eventually get a zero result. Bingo.

Never mind that an average tree in that area produces about eight times the maximum threshold. It’s called “phytogenic VOC.”

[bert]

I thought you could trade environmental credits.

To credit your process, you could just cut down the tree thereby saving more than the expense of your process

[Robert A Cook PE]

Yes, the VOC levels are set “nationally” based on measurements taken up north. (To satisfy the demand for limited volatile organics in the enclosed static Los Angeles Basin based on THAT valley's extreme pollution during atmosphere inversions in summer.) Far, far away from the trillions of pine trees across MS,AL, GA, and obviously the Pine Tar states of SC and NC, and the Blue Ridge natural pollution of TN and KY.

So now Atlanta has summertime air quality limits on VOC that are exceeded by the trees!