EXTRA...

Tropical depression 300 miles east of Chatham as town meets to decide on filling breakthrough and just off-cape pollution matters

 Tropical depression between Cape and Bermuda this morning
Heading north-north-east at increased speed at 5am Tuesday

Radar of TD Chantal at 6am todayA tropical depression formed late Monday between Bermuda and Cape Cod and was expected to briefly become a tropical storm.  The storm center was 380 miles east of Chatham where voters will decide tonight whether to spends over $4 million to fill in a break in their barroier beach caused by an April storm. The system wilkl probably become a Tropical Storm briefly and could affect Newfoundland late Wednesday or early Thursday, but it will not be too strong.

While this is the  third depression the 2007 hurrican season, it comes quite early and is expected to increase in strength today. "As a tropical system it has a very short life ahead of it," said senior hurricane specialist James Franklin. the National Hurricane Center.The depression was about 380 miles north of Bermuda and 380 miles southeast of Chatham on Tuesday morning, according to the Hurricane Center. At 5 a.m. EDT, it had top sustained winds near 35 mph and was moving toward north-northeast at 21 mph, forecasters said. That's an increase in speed since a 16 mph reading at 11 p.m. EDT.

The depression will be named Chantal if it reaches tropical storm strength with winds of at least 39 mph. There have been two named storms in 2007: Subtropical Storm Andrea, which formed in May, and Tropical Storm Barry, which formed June 1, the first day of hurricane season.  Read the Sun-Sentinal story here.
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Chatham watching nature alter their landscape as it meets tonight

With valuable real estate and the town's harbor hanging in the balance, Chatham voters must decide whether to try to push back the sandsCHATHAM -- From Minister's Point in North Chatham, where million-dollar houses ring Pleasant Bay, the breach in Nauset Beach makes for gorgeous scenery: Where a bar of pale sand once stretched uninterrupted across the horizon, blocking the force of the ocean, blue-green water now swirls through a widening gap.

The 1,000-foot break in the landscape, picturesque as it is, has raised weighty questions about how this town at the elbow of Cape Cod should respond. Tonight Chatham's 5,500 voters will decide at a special Town Meeting whether the town should spend $4 million to fill the breach with fresh sand, undoing changes wrought by a pounding storm in April and restoring a natural barrier that protects coastal property.

Threatened homeowners and town officials moved decisively in the weeks after the storm... But many residents say that the push for Chatham to assert its will in shaping its coastline has failed to gain traction in the face of a more popular philosophy: Let nature take its course...  Read the rest of this Globe story here. 
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The politics of pollution:
The world faces a potent political struggle as it grapples with global warming

SOMERSET — Perched like a fortress at the edge of Mount Hope Bay, Brayton Point power plant is a prominent landmark in SouthCoast — a region struggling to reinvent itself as a center for clean, renewable energy.  Brayton Point (on right) is one of the biggest electricity producers in Massachusetts. But each year, its smokestacks release several million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — inefficient generators and high-carbon coal fuel make it one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases in the Northeast... 

Even among politicians who are endorsing action to combat global warming, there are varying degrees of commitment, notes Sue Reid, a staff attorney at the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation. She pointed to Sen. Edward Kennedy and Congressman William Delahunt's opposition to the proposed Cape Wind project off Cape Cod as an example of how political positions on climate change can be fickle...  Read the rest of this Standard-Times article here.