WHITE RIVER JUNCTION – Caitlin Sabins took her 9-year-old son to Veterans Park on Railroad Row for a swim a couple of months ago. In one direction, across the Connecticut River, his father was recently arrested at Kilton Public Library in Lebanon. In the other direction, across the White River, he had overdosed twice in one day last summer, on the Hartford Town Hall steps.
Under the bridge between the park and town hall, Sabins found syringe waste littered in the sand. She made a video and posted it to Facebook.
“Not for judgement, but for compassion,” Sabins, who works in outreach engagement with Connecticut Valley Addiction Recovery in Hartford, told the Valley News. “People are struggling. I want to bring attention to this.”
At Lyman Point Park last Friday afternoon, across the river from Veterans Park, Sabin came out to clean up again.
She joined a group of over a dozen participating in the HIV/HCV Resource Center’s first community cleanup.
At the end of the event, which lasted several hours, volunteers in four groups trekking from the Main Street Museum up to the newly built Leahy Shelter and Resource Center collected roughly 1,300 syringes, according to the nonprofit’s executive director Laura Byrne.
Back when Sabins was recording the video about the syringes she found with her son at Veterans Park, she said somebody confronted her, upset about the video’s tone and the fact the needles were there in the first place.
Sabins, with trash grabbers in gloved hands as she searched alongside volunteers provided with similar safety gear and sharps containers by the HIV/HCV Resource Center, said she understands why people are upset.
The Lebanon-based nonprofit, which provides medical case management services to low-income people affected by HIV, hepatitis C and substance use in Grafton and Sullivan counties in New Hampshire and Windsor and Orange counties in Vermont, began its syringe exchange program in 2006, the Valley News previously reported.
Last year, the organization gave out about 3,800 naloxone doses and tracked about 780 overdose reversals.
In a phone call ahead of the community cleanup, she declined to share the number of needles exchanged.
“People think, ‘You’re giving them needles, you’re saying it’s okay to use,'” Sabins said. “But the clean needles are given out … to reduce the transmission of disease.”
Federal health officials say syringe programs are associated with roughly a 50% reduction in new HIV and hepatitis C infections among people who inject drugs.
When you’re an addict, she said, you’re going to use no matter what.
“Your brain thinks you need it like food,” she said.
In Vermont, state data show only 4% of people served at syringe programs in 2024 were connected to addiction treatment.
For the last 18 years, Sabins has been in recovery, going to a methadone clinic.
“I don’t have 18 years of sobriety,” she said. “There were relapses and then I’d get right back on track. But this time, my life has been the longest without opiates and benzos. My goal is to get off the methadone.”
The goal for Joanne Brown, a White River Junction resident of around 50 years who was volunteering with the nonprofit on Friday, was to walk her pug, labradoodle and shih tzu around town in peace.
“I frequently see evidence of syringes, like the little orange caps,” Brown said. “It really upsets me.”
She said she had “mixed feelings” about the nonprofit’s syringe exchange program.
“Giving out the syringes, aren’t we asking for the debris?” she said, adding, however, that she thinks “it’s important to clean this stuff up.”
The HIV/HCV Resource Center has QR codes posted around White River Junction, including at Hartford Town Hall, that people can scan when they encounter syringe waste, alerting staff from the nonprofit to come and dispose of it.
While discouraged, the nonprofit instructs those who scan the code that if “you must pick them up,” to do the following: put on thick gloves; use tongs or pliers or something other than your hand; carefully put the sharps in a thick plastic container “such as a laundry detergent or kitty litter bottle”; screw the lid on tightly and seal with duct tape; and write “do not recycle” on the container before placing in the trash.
The nonprofit states “never” to do the following: pick up the needles with your hands; put loose needles in the trash; flush needles down a toilet; or try to break the needle.
While the QR codes will remain posted for people to alert HIV/HCV Resource Center staff to dispose of the syringe waste, the nonprofit plans to host community cleanups such as Friday’s event “monthly until the snow gets really bad,” Byrne told the Valley News.
“I feel like people have been complaining about needle waste and now there’s people complaining about cleaning up needle waste,” Byrne said.
Future cleanups will be posted on the Town of Hartford’s website, with no registration required and a minimum age of 16. Byrne encourages people to learn more about the HIV/HCV Resource Center by giving the cleanups a chance, visiting the nonprofit’s website or calling her directly.
“I would be happy to field calls from people who have questions and concerns,” she said. “Especially concerns.”
To contact Byrne, call 603-306-1105.
If someone is stuck by a needle, the nonprofit urges them to wash with soap and water (not alcohol-based sanitizer) and seek emergency healthcare to access post-exposure prophylaxis within 72 hours. To reach the PEP hotline, call 1-888-448-4911.
