When there are articles about pumped storage plants the usual problems are not legislative or infrastructure. The biggest issue is that investors don't like to create overcapacity, which mean that there isn't a lot of available renewable energy to buy cheap in order to sell expensively later to recover the cost of storage. When overcapacity occur the enthusiasm for more capacity quickly drop. The secondary issues tend to be more physical in nature. Salt water is very problematic in any situation, so putting pumped storage plants near the ocean has many problems. If you use fresh water you compete with existing utilization, and most suitable locations for pumped storage already have existing hydroelectric power. Fresh water has often a very complex ecosystems and everything from nature to human depend on it.