>What does this even mean? Why the hell does it have to be so hard to get anything done in this country?

Because some engineering specialty lobbyist wants it to be that way to drive business to his clients, he cooks up some narrative about how more review will save the planet and HN takes it at face value.

You see this crap with every sort of permitting. Except perhaps in the rare cases it constrains the biggest entities (e.g. DuPont dumping crap in the river or whatever) all these BS processes and requirements do is raise the richness floor of who can play the game. The BigCos can pay for the pretexts to get the permission they need to keep doing whatever, free from the competition from everyone down-market who can't afford that.