Safe needle drop boxes to be installed in Palmer

PALMER — Local residents in Palmer have worked for over a year to be able to provide a secure needle disposal site in Palmer which will likely be installed within city limits later this month.

In 2019, Imran Chaudhry served as an interim member of the Palmer City Council for a little over a month. In his last meeting, Chaudhry asked for council support to provide a secure site for syringe disposal in Palmer for those with health concerns requiring the use of syringes or for dirty needles found in public places to be disposed of. Chaudhry’s motion was seconded by Councilwoman Sabrena Council.

“The people should have a place where they can dispose of these needles in a proper manner,” said Chaudhry. “It happens. It’s a community issue, a worldwide issue, and if we can prevent someone or a kid from stepping on a needle on the ground and make Palmer cleaner in totality, I think we’re doing a good job but it’s for everybody.”

In 2019, Chaudhry presented to the council with representation from the Alaskan Aids Assistance Association asking for support for the needle dropbox, which was well received by the council. Chaudhry noted that 13.5 million people disposed of 7.8 million needles improperly every year at that meeting. Former city manager for Palmer Nate Wallace had intended for maintenance funds to be used for construction of the needle dropbox, but in early 2020 Wallace left and Palmer hired John Moosey as city manager.

As March of 2020 brought the COVID-19 pandemic to Alaska, funding was no longer available. That’s when Chaudhry teamed up with Water Tower Outreach, a local group seeking nonprofit status to support direct impact outreach programs around Palmer

“It’s something that we were interested in helping with because I had an experience where I put my daughter, I was getting her out of the car and there was a dirty needle right next to her foot and so as soon as I heard that he was doing that it was very close to home for me,” said Liz Warren. “If we can prevent one kid from getting pricked by a dirty needle, it’s 100 percent worth it to us. It’s just one of those things I never thought I’d have to explain to my three-year-old, what a needle was and what to do in that situation and I don’t want any other parents to have to do that or any other kids to be affected by it.”

Warren, Chaudry and other business owners formed Water Tower Outreach with the needle dropbox as their first project in mind. Water Tower Outreach also helped support hockey equipment and rink boards for Sutton Elementary and meals for seniors over the holiday season. Through collaboration with local businesses, Trijet donated construction and design of the secure needle dropbox and Advanced Powdercoating also donated services to the project.

“There’s a need. I’ve been told that there’s a need because we do have an issue in certain spots in our town and with our children, with our citizens, with our visitors, we want as clean and inviting a town as we can get and needles on the ground do not say that,” said Moosey. “This is good for our community for those that maybe find something on the street or you have that need yourself because of health reasons. It will be convenient for you and they are also providing for the first year all the acquisitions or collection of the needles so at this point in time other than my work getting this thing in order and organizing it there’s no cost to the city of Palmer.”

After assuming the initiative was a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chaudhry garnered local support to fund the project and provide a safe drop-box for needle disposal. The location of the drop box has not yet been announced, but has been built and is ready for installation.

“We came up with this Water Tower Outreach as just a way to do good deeds throughout the community and try and help out wherever we could and I know he had been trying to get this thing going and we just wanted to help,” said Warren.

Chaudhry consulted with health care professionals and former Palmer Police chief Lance Ketterling as the initiative began over a year ago, and Moosey consulted with current chief Dwayne Shelton on the idea last year.

“The idea is to give them a place where they can safely dispose of their needles or like the users so that may be that we wouldn’t have needles in our parks or at the end of cul de sacs, in people’s driveways,” said Shelton. “Now they can safely gather them up and dispose of them in a safe place without, it’s going to make it easier for them to do that on their own and so I think that’s probably going to be the biggest benefit.”

Shelton said that PPD are not required to fill out reports on each needle pickup that is either brought into PPD or called in as a request for officers to respond, but that it would free up some time for offers that would otherwise be spent responding to the sporadic calls for dirty needles. Chaudhry spent little more than a month as a member of the Palmer City Council, but also assisted in organizing distribution of meals for Valley seniors in March. Moosey noted that many citizens have ideas, but few are ‘doers.’

“I’d like to say thank you to former councilman Imran Chaudhry for following through on something that he brought to the council quite some time ago and working hard and doing it himself to bring that needle receptacle to Palmer,” said Councilwoman Julie Berberich.

After Chaudhry assumed that the idea had lost steam at the start of the pandemic, local Palmer residents looking to make a difference helped him get the needle drop box across the finish line.

“They brought it back from the dead. It’s huge,” said Chaudhry. “Like any other social health issue that should and need to be addressed and I think this is a good first step because it does not harm anybody. All it does is keep Palmer a little bit safer.”