Sounds to me like damned if you do, damned if you don't.

People would have been upset if the opening had to be postponed because of a missing approval for all theoretical modes of operation for the PTS, so apparently they decided to go ahead with a reasonable scenario and now two years later they find the need to revisit this topic and get approval for additional scenarios. People are upset again. I guess there is no right or wrong here, but working a project based business I don't find the approach unreasonable (let's start with a realistic scenario that we can get approved in time, rather than delaying the opening and spending extra €€€ on evaluating other options. Let's worry about that when the time is right).