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CLEMMONS — Over the weekend, the Village of Clemmons Stormwater Department, with collaboration from the Forsyth Sheriff Office and Inmar Intelligence, hosted its sixth Fall Medicine Drop in an effort to dispose of unused or expired medicine in a safe and secure way from households.

The medicine drops help prevent people from flushing medicines down the drain which also helps protect local water supplies.

According to a release from the stormwater department, the dangers of prescription and over the counter drugs that get flushed down the drain is typical wastewater treatment systems (wastewater treatment plants and septic tanks) are not designed to treat medications and they simply cannot filter out 100 percent of these chemicals.

Prescription and over the counter drugs will pass through these systems and enter groundwater and surface water resources untouched. Those pharmaceuticals are slow to break down, or don’t break down at all which will pollute drinking water and harm aquatic life around us.

The Clemmons Medicine Drop helped collect 94.99 pounds of medication during this event in an effort to help protect local homes and waters. The next village of Clemmons Medicine Drop event is scheduled for March 2025.