AMSTERDAM — A crew from an environmental cleanup company was busy Wednesday picking up PCB-laden soil dumped from a tractor-trailer in an accident the night before.

State Department of Environmental Conservation officials are looking into a construction detour that began this week as a potential issue because more truckloads of the soil, being removed from a Superfund cleanup site in Queensbury, are expected to be shipped to a disposal site in western New York, potentially via Amsterdam.

The incident took place about 8:30 p.m. when the trucker had difficulty changing gears and failed to negotiate the turn at the southern end of Truax Road, which intersects with state Route 5, according to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department.

Truax Road runs down a steep slope before motorists see a sharp left turn followed by a rightward veer that meets with Route 5.

Truck driver Eugene Banks Jr., 50, of Delanson, got pinned in the tractor-trailer Tuesday night and was rescued by Cranesville firefighters and a crew from the Greater Amsterdam Volunteer Ambulance Corps, according to the county Sheriff’s Department.

Banks was taken to St. Mary’s Hospital and later released, according to the county Sheriff’s Department.

Traffic that normally travels state Route 67 is being detoured around road reconstruction work in the city of Amsterdam, and DEC spokeswoman Maureen Wren said officials are hoping to come up with alternative routes for the trucks carrying the hazardous materials.

Wren said the soil is being transported from the Luzerne Road cleanup site in Queensbury. The site had been used for salvaging capacitors, according to DEC documents, which led to spills of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a suspected carcinogen.

Wren said two primary activities are taking place there. Some contaminated soil is being cleaned on site, and the soil that can’t be cleaned and is deemed a hazardous material is being transported to a disposal site run by Chemical Waste Management in Niagara County, north of Buffalo.

The work is ongoing and more shipments are expected, Wren said.

“This isn’t the normal way that they travel when they’re bringing their materials,” Wren said, adding the DEC is looking into alternatives, if any exist.

“We’ll do what is necessary to prevent this from happening again,” Wren said.

The detour forcing vehicles to use Truax Road was required by the reconstruction of Church Street, which is part of Route 67 within the city of Amsterdam.

City engineer Richard Phillips said there are no plans to change the detour route, but he said the city might see about adding additional signs warning truckers and motorists about the sharp turn at the bottom of the hill.

“I don’t know what sort of signage is there right now, but we could reinforce it with something that stands out a little more for the guys that aren’t used to going there,” Phillips said.

Altamont-based Carver Construction is in charge of the detour route and traffic control during the Church Street reconstruction. The city hired the firm in August for $680,000. Phillips said Church Street is expected to be closed for up to five weeks while crews replace and repair underground structures.

“They’re working right in the center of the road,” Phillips said. “It makes the work move much faster and you don’t see those long lines of traffic like you saw last year.”

“We’ve had little complaints locally here and there, but overall people are finding their way around,” Phillips said.

Wren said the company performing the Superfund work in Queensbury, D.A. Collins Environmental Specialists, is cleaning up the spilled soil in Amsterdam and officials anticipate twice as much dirt will be excavated than was spilled to make sure no PCBs remain on site.

The spill site is visible from the Mohawk River, but Wren said there is no evidence the PCBs entered the waterway.

Once cleanup is complete, soil samples will taken on a continuing basis until officials are sure there are no PCBs left along Truax Road, Wren said.

PCBs are a manmade organic chemical that was used for its inflammability, chemical stability and electrical insulating properties, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Contact with the chemical has been shown to cause cancer and other ailments in animals and PCBs also are believed to cause cancer in humans.