As pressure mounts on Gov. Charlie Baker to speak out against a planned natural gas compressor station in Weymouth, the town’s mayor hopes to torpedo the project through a state permitting process.

Activists opposed to new fossil fuel infrastructure who fear gaseous pollutants seeping from the proposed station and the potential for a disaster have sought to enlist Baker in their cause to no avail.

Speaking to anti-pipeline activist Margaret Bellafiore, who called in to WGBH’s Ask the Governor program last week, Baker said the state only has a bit part to play, with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission taking the leading role in permitting Spectra Energy’s multistate Atlantic Bridge pipeline.

“The feds at the end of the day control these decisions,” Baker said on Thursday.

“Lock, stock and barrel,” ventured co-host Margery Eagan.

“That’s right,” Baker replied.

Although FERC controls the siting of the project, Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Matt Beaton said that as part of the federal approval the project must receive state environmental permits.

“Now it turns to us as part of that FERC license to make sure that the project meets the requirements of state environmental permitting and we are going to look at those issue by issue,” Beaton told the News Service on Friday.

Beaton said the project would be assessed based on the merits and “not in any predetermined way.”

Weymouth Mayor Robert Hedlund, a Republican and former state senator, has been waging a multi-front legal challenge to Spectra’s plans for locating a compressor station within the Weymouth Fore River Designated Port Area.

The South Shore town contends that building a gas compressor across the water from Quincy contravenes the state’s federally approved Coastal Zone Management policy of promoting water-dependent industries in the state’s ports.

“It has to be a water-dependent use under that designation and we’re contending this is not a water-dependent use,” Hedlund told the News Service. Hedlund said the proposed compressor station is also uniquely situated in a densely populated area.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, compressors maintain pressure to keep gas flowing, and there are 1,400 in the U.S. natural gas pipeline network.

In its conditional approval, FERC described the Weymouth compressor station as a 7,700 horsepower facility that will be raised to about 19 feet above sea level with a permanent footprint of about 4 acres.

A spokeswoman for Spectra Energy Partners said the Atlantic Bridge project will “move reliable, economical natural gas into New England and to specific end-use markets in the Canadian Maritime provinces targeting an in-service date in November 2017.”

Before the Office of Coastal Zone Management finishes its consistency review, Spectra will need a so-called Chapter 91 waterways permit and an air quality permit from the Department of Environmental Protection, according to Beaton’s office.

The Weymouth mayor thinks defeating the compressor station is a longshot.

“The odds are still against us,” Hedlund said. “You haven’t seen one of these projects ever rejected.”

For Alice Arena, an activist who believes the pipeline project would foil the state’s required greenhouse gas reduction target, the field of battle is both within the courts and the political sphere.

Arena was part of a group that tried to raise Baker’s awareness of the project by delivering anti-pipeline messages from thousands of residents to the governor. Arena said she does not know why the governor is discounting his power to affect the outcome.

“It’s kind of hard to predict motive. He continues to give the industry line that we need the gas,” Arena told the News Service. “We will continue to petition Governor Baker.”

Arena’s group Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station has hired attorney Carolyn Elefant, based in Washington D.C., to contest FERC’s decision, and it has been fundraising “aggressively” to finance the legal challenge.