Department of Transportation

New York's Department of Transportation (DOT) was the first state agency called to the scene of the accident. DOT is responsible for emergency oil spills in New York, and the leak of transformer oil was akin to that category. DOT had an emergency contract with the New England Pollution Control company (NEPCO), which was experienced with PCBs, so NEPCO was called in as soon as it was known that these toxins were involved. The local oil-spill engineer responsible for calling NEPCO was at first unable to ascertain exactly what had happened at the State Office Building. He was in a meeting in Albany at the time and tried to call his Binghamton office, located in the SOB, but no one answered:

I tried to call the Department of Environmental Conservation, positioned on the eighth floor [of the SOB], and I kept ringing and nobody answered, and I said "That is pretty strange, 'cause there is always somebody there." My supervisor here gave me a number to call, and I finally [got through], and they told me that all three buildings had been closed. Then I called out the contractor. Then I talked to a couple of people from OGS, but they were getting bits and pieces of information, too . . . You know, what was going on just really was all confused. (Peterson interview, July 27, 1981)

The oil-spill engineer and his supervisor in Albany decided that because DOT had initially called NEPCO, they would keep the company there until the oil in the mechanical room was cleaned up, and that "OGS would handle any other cleanup. So Sunday morning [four days after the fire] we were all cleaned up at the transformer room and the whole shot went over to them" (Peterson interview, July 27, 1981). The Department of Transportation also helped to find a certified landfill for the contaminated oil.

But DOT, presaging the actions of other agencies, did not expand its role beyond these initial efforts: "If it is only a trace amount [of PCBs], we will handle it. But when the facts started coming out about the amount of PCBs and the other stuff that was associated with it, we got out" (Peterson interview, July 27, 1981). Although it may have been surprising that the various agents in city government did not become actively involved in the SOB situation, it is not surprising that DOT did not become a central player in Binghamton. Its responsibilities, after all, were quite remote from toxic-chemical decontamination and medical surveillance. Discussing DOT's role is nevertheless important because it illustrates how even organizations whose functions were only distantly related to the demands of the State Office Building accident were drawn into this loosely connected network of agencies.