An e-mail:

Mr. Lowry
I’m in the environmental impact analysis business and have been for 25 years. I can assure you that many environmental consultants are as frustrated by the insane delays in decision-making as you are. Perhaps more so, since we deal with it every single day. Many of us are turning into libertarians even though our incomes depend on government regulations.
One problem is that the National Environmental Policy Act is a law about process, not product. An agency can legally pick the alternative that has the worst impacts on the environment, as long as those impacts and the impacts of the alternatives are identified. But this means that lawsuits by opponents to a project focus on process. Was the public given sufficient time to comment? Were Native Americans adequately consulted? Were public hearings announced sufficiently in advance? Did biologists contact the appropriate agencies regarding tree squirrels? Was there a reasonable alternative to the project that should have been considered? Was the programmatic agreement prepared to comply with the National Historic Preservation Act reviewed by the appropriate parties? Etc. Etc. Etc.
Agencies have been sued so much that they are gun shy, almost timid. A BLM field office manager told me that half the staff time in his office was taken up with responding to legal challenges. Every year each Forest Service District puts out a long list of every project that they are proposing – from timber sales, to repairing hiking trails, to installing new restrooms at a campground, to reseeding a hillside after a fire. One Forest supervisor told me that there are groups that review this list and challenge every single action on it. Every one of them.
You complain that Keystone has been in the works since 2008. That’s not unusual for a major project. You complain that the EIS is 8 volumes. That’s big, but not exceptional.
The process is broken. Government agencies know it. Consultants know it. Environmentalists know it . . . and take advantage of it.