Driving along Lynn Shore Drive at times can be a pleasant experience.  The gentle waves crashing against the shore, the bicyclists peddling up and down the walkways and the children daring to walk the tightrope-like wall along the beach’s borders are all tell-tale signs of a beach full of life.
Now, roll down the window.
The stench, which some liken it to rotten eggs, comes seeping in through your slightly cracked window as you cruise along.  Even if you haven’t rolled the window down, the smell finds its way in through your vents.  The noxious fumes are enough to send you seeking out the long way to Swampscott or any other destination along Lynn’s Diamond District.
These complaints are nothing new - they have been made loud and clear for years.  The smell permeating from the beach has got to go.
The Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) has begun an all-out assault on the stench, which is caused by rare sea algae called Pilayella littoralis.
After working tirelessly with state legislators, residents and scientists, the DCR has begun implementing its plans to remove the algae.
The nasty mutant form of algae is indigenous to the area, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Donna Coveney.
Coveney argues that one of the ways to rid the beach of the problem is to bulldoze the beach and wash it back into the ocean.
This is the task that the DCR, with a slight modification, has taken up.  Wendy Fox, a spokeswoman for the DCR, recently told the Globe North that full-time work crews are hard at work digging and piling truck beds full of the brown algae.
However, instead of pushing it back into the water, and hopefully far enough out to sea, the DCR is disposing of the algae at landfills.
Three hundred tons of algae have so far been removed, and the work continues every morning to get the upper hand on what some thought would be a losing battle.
As the warm weather approaches, the algae fighting must take place now if the summer stench is to be diminished to an acceptable level for area residents.
Removing the algae at this critical time of year cuts back on the lifespan it has to reproduce in the ocean, thus doubling and tripling the size washed up on the beach in Lynn and Nahant.
Other methods to rid the beach of the algae have proved fruitless.  Simply dumping the algae back into the water, far enough out where it would have little chance of survival, did little to cure the problem.
The decomposition of the algae only added nutrients to the water, which the dreaded seaweed used to grow and multiply.