What are some problems related to NEPA's Environmental Impact Study's?

As an Engineer, I believe in protecting our environment, we only have one earth.
However EIS and the EPA in general is forcing good manufacturing jobs out of the united states to 3rd world countries. For example china now manufactures items that the US previously manufactured, they have no EPA or OSHA, we can not compete...But their dumping of chemicals contaminates waterways and the air world wide. We have one world, why do we the US have to lead the world?
An EIS was performed for a dam in Washington state, when I was young. The dam project was stopped because of a silly little endangered fish was in the waterway. The project was cancelled.

Many Environmental Impact Studies have cost many areas work. When people don't work, they have
poor diets, low quality health coverage if any. So the guy Gets Obese, has a heart attack and dies early. But if he had a good manufacturing Job, he may still get obese, but he will have medical
support to help him take care of the problems. He will live a longer life than he would without the plant in his neighborhood.   www.brainpwr.com

As someone who has worked on both sides of the issue (engineering design and environmental permitting), I can say that the lost jobs argument is without much merit. Companies will cry about the cost but it seldom comes down to a make or break case. As for dams, most were built on pork barrel spending with no hope of ever recovering the cost to the public. But that's not what you are asking.

One problem with the NEPA process is that the review process can be very long and comments / complaints often come from competing sides. An applicant, in trying to address an issue, may have a hard time when different groups are demanding different solutions. Also, the length of review often requires the applicant to file the application early, before all the detail engineering has been completed. This means that the project described in the final EIS may bear no resemblance to the project in the draft EIS. Additional confusion is caused by the practice of issuing the final EIS as an addendum to the draft rather than revising and reissuing the draft. This is often done as a cost saving measure, but it can make the analysis almost impossible to follow.

Then there is the issue as to how air emission limits are set.  The applicant files for an air permit based on best engineering judgment and a demonstration that Best Available Control Technology is employed. Once the application has been reviewed and approved, a permit to construct is issued. Since an applicant never wants to go back and revise the permit numbers, much fat may be added to the initial estimates. This can be a dangerous practice because if the emissions are too large, the permit may not be approved. Or the facility will have to operate under difficult permit conditions. Also, the listing of excessive emissions may consume valuable offset credits or require the purchase of credits. But if the original estimate is too low, the applicant can face notice of violations, fines, and excessive delays.

Since local impacts are cumulative, a project applicant is required to look at the effect his project will have along with all other planned projects in the area. This can be difficult to do since each project will be at a different state of development. Air agencies often limit the extent of impacts to emissions that occur within their district. This creates some strange cases where diesel locomotive emissions may only be counted from the site boundary to the state or district border. The EIS does not address the full global impact of the project. This may change with the inclusion of global warming impacts.

The cost to prepare an EIS is high because much of the required material has to be recreated for each project. One would think that the discussion of geology, natural resources, sensitive habitat, etc, would be the same for various projects located in the same area. While the first applicant in a new area would bear the greatest cost, subsequent applicants could benefit from the developed data. While this was an initial thought for the NEPA process, Congress failed to fund the establishment of an EIS database that was searchable. There is no requirement for an applicant to send a copy of their EIS to the USEPA and it is up to each state to decide how they manage their EIS's.  Much historic data is just sitting on bookshelves, inaccessible for future projects.