DCR Asleep at Wheel; Lambert is No Sullivan

The Department of  Conservation and Recreation has failed miserably in carrying on the legacy left by former DCR Commissioner Rick Sullivan.

Sullivan, now the governor’s chief environmental official, was a true friend to this city. He understood the Lynn/Nahant beach problem with the algae and he did something about it.

For the first time in 100 years – and for the past five years – the horrific stink that comes from putrefying algae was gone and the quality of life in this city along the shore was improved dramatically.

All that ended about three weeks ago, and really long before that when the jokers manning the DCR base that cares for the Lynn/Nahant Beach area, stopped picking up the algae under the ruse that there wasn’t enough overtime pay to do the job.

So they let it go.

The head of the operation here let it go and didn’t care. The employees let it go and didn’t care. Two weeks ago, the stink got so bad residents were vomiting on Lynn Shore Drive.

Only after numerous calls were made to DCR headquarters by the likes of Robert Tucker and the members of the Lynn/Nahant Residents Beach group and others did the DCR relent and make it possible for the algae to be picked up.

So the stink is now receding and things are getting back to normal but Ed Lambert, the head of DCR ought to be ashamed and Rick Sullivan should tell him so.

DCR isn’t doing us a favor picking up the algae. DCR is simply following through on what Rick Sullivan achieved during his time as the head of DCR.

He was here. He understood. He smelled the stink and he did everything in his power to create a system that worked tirelessly against it. During his entire time at DCR, Sullivan fixed what had been broken for longer than a century. Even scientists said it couldn’t be done. Sullivan never took no for an answer.

When Sullivan left DCR to take over the environmental job for the governor, Lambert made it one year before everything Sullivan worked for collapsed miserably into a stink – a stench really – that had the entire North Shore of Boston remarking once again, how badly Lynn stinks and what a complete dump the place is.

Where were the employees and the head of the Lynn/Nahant DCR employees when the stench got so powerful it could cause residents to vomit? Where did they go? What were they doing? Shrugging their shoulders and saying nothing can be done or simply coming in, twiddling their fingers and complaining about overtime?

Something should have been done. Instead, nothing was done and might not have been done unless angry and threatening calls were made to Mr. Lambert who has come to understand what dereliction of duty is when it comes to DCR employees.

These people supposedly managing the well being of the Lynn/Nahant Reservation should be reprimanded, removed to another location or fired.

They’re useless and they proved it.

More importantly, they proved to marginalize everything good done by Rick Sullivan and they proved as well how easy it is for Mr. Lambert, again, to be used.

Mr. Lambert should come here now and then as Rick Sullivan did. But we’re told he’s just too busy to care about one of his major beaches – and he proved that recently without a doubt.