A disturbing and potentially dangerous discovery was made this week in Malibu near Ramirez Canyon. A local resident who takes daily walks with his dogs nearly stumbled onto a jumble of used hypodermic needles and syringes.
Ulf Soderqvist, who has been walking the area daily for six months, said a couple of months ago he had twice spotted some isolated needles with plungers by the side of the road. Saying he was initially concerned, he also added they had “miraculously disappeared.” Then last Tuesday morning while walking on Pacquet Place, a paved road roughly 200 feet up from Ramirez Canyon near Winding Way, Soderqvist saw a troublesome sight—roughly 15 dirty injection devices out in the open at the side of the road on the ocean side.
It’s not clear where the dangerous medical waste is coming from.
Soderqvist said—although he knows it may be unrelated—“on the top of the hill there’s a rehab facility there.”
When the Malibu resident came upon the needles, he was not alone.
“My dog nearly stepped into them and my son yelled, ‘Dad, Dad stop! There’re needles on the road,’” Soderqvist recalled. “Syringes with needles. It appeared they were used for not a good purpose.” With no other trash in the immediate area, Soderqvist described the incident as “isolated.”
“It’s not like someone was dumping trash there,” he described. “This was just someone dumping needles.”
Alarmed at finding bio-hazardous material for the third time and with the discovery of so many more needles, Soderqvist and his wife Neda decided to call the sheriff’s station.
“I thought, ‘This is just not right.’ The repercussion of having animals stepping on them or even biting them—who knows if they could be infected—I just don’t know?,” he said. “This time I thought it was time to let someone know.” Soderqvist did meet with law enforcement, but claimed, “That didn’t really help either.”
He said he called City Hall and someone took down the address, but that nothing happened. When Soderqvist met with a sheriff’s deputy on scene Thursday he claimed, “I explained the situation and was told, ‘We can’t do much about that,’ adding, ‘That’s not what we do.”
Chuckling with disbelief, Soderqvist even claimed the officer suggested that he clean up the dirty medical waste himself and perhaps give it to a fire station.
“I’m not going to touch some syringes. Really?” Soderqvist described.
Soderqvist claimed the officer suggested he call the City of Malibu and that they would “take care of it.”
“So that was my option,” Soderqvist explained. Although frustrated that he could not find an agency with jurisdiction over the cleanup, Soderqvist said he is not critical of the sheriff’s department, but was hoping they could do more. Neda Soderqvist called the Malibu Public Works Department and was able to leave a message.
The Malibu Times contacted the city’s public safety manager, Susan Dueñas, on Thursday to discuss the needles.
By that time, Dueñas had commented on Facebook about the atrocity and said she was planning to contact the sheriff’s department regarding the issue. By phone, though, she said the dirty needles and cleanup were not in her purview. Calling the situation “not okay,” Dueñas said she hoped the needles could be put in a sharps box and disposed of immediately and claimed she would do what she could to initiate their immediate disposal.
“It bothers me as a mother, a hiker and a city employee,” Dueñas said, but insisted, “If we are to address the situation, we need documentation.”
That left it to private citizens to clean up the dangerous waste left on the side of the road.
“I just don’t think a private person should be jeopardizing their health or anything like that just to keep the area clean. It’s really got to be the city’s thing,” Soderqvist said.
The Soderqvists finally relented by Saturday due to the “sleepless nights” they had worrying about the hazardous biological waste that could potentially harm people and animals. The couple went to the site Saturday afternoon and with a rake and pliers picked up and bagged the debris, according to what they told The Malibu Times. They reported they took the medical waste to a fire station.
The Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station did not respond to multiple requests for comment. No one from the station was available to corroborate Soderqvist’s claims.
“I love Malibu and everything about it,” the hiker said. “I just want to keep it safe. I just think these things are something one should take seriously.”
