Environmentalists once again took aim at emissions from TransAlta’s Centralia steam-electric coal plant this week, this time calling on the federal government to step in.

    EarthJustice, on behalf of the National Parks Conservation, the Sierra Club and others, filed a petition with the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this week asking the agency to object to the air pollution permit for the plant.

    The permit was granted by the Southwest Washington Clean Air Agency, which has said it lacks the regulatory power to reign in TransAlta’s emissions.

    The state’s lone coal-fired electricity plant is also the state’s largest polluter, and environmentalists and conservationists have stepped up efforts to bring the emissions under scrutiny.

    According to a release, the groups are opposing the permit because it contains no mercury or global warming controls and fails to require the best controls for haze-pollution over Mount Rainier, Olympic and North Cascades National Parks, the Goat Rocks Wilderness and other forest, wilderness and recreational areas throughout the region.

    “Southwest Clean Air has failed to protect Washington and the region’s residents from air pollution that is harming our children, contaminating our national parks, and warming and damaging our climate,” said Janette Brimmer, an attorney with Earthjustice. “EPA intervention is necessary to provide adequate control of harmful pollutants.”

    The EPA recently released a draft finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.”

    Gov. Chris Gregoire earlier this year issued an executive order calling for a reduction in green house gasses.

    Environmental groups have since protested the plant’s emissions at the state level, and now have moved on to federal agencies.

    “There is no excuse for the agency to allow these amounts of damaging emissions from this old coal-fired plant,” said Sean Smith, policy director for the National Parks Conservation Association. “EPA must step in to protect Washington’s majestic national parks and the region’s residents from this major polluter.”