Complete civil packages for battery energy storage near Fort Covington, NY: pad subgrade and mass grading, foundation excavation, access and crane pads, collection trenching, ductbank, SWPPP, and substation civil.
Backwell contracts complete civil site work packages for battery energy storage developers and EPCs building near Fort Covington in Franklin County, New York. One contract covers site preparation through final stabilization, with Backwell field leadership on site.
Fort Covington sits on the Salmon River at the Canadian border on NY 37 and US 11, adjoining the Akwesasne territory, in the flattest and most open farmland in the county. Fort Covington Solar LLC has a 250 MW entry in the NYISO queue interconnecting on the Moses to Willis 230 kV line MW1, which is the transmission tie between the St. Lawrence hydro complex and the Willis node. That line, and the scale of the generation proposed on it, is what makes the town a candidate for co located storage. Subgrade is Malone calcareous dense till and Nicholville silt with a high seasonal water table.
Publicly reported battery energy storage in and around Franklin County:
Project details come from public filings and reporting and are listed to show where the work is. Backwell is not affiliated with these projects or their developers.
Franklin County runs from the St. Lawrence lowland at the Canadian border south into the central Adirondacks. The northern third, where the storage and solar projects sit, is a low till and lake plain carrying Malone soils formed in calcareous dense till and somewhat poorly drained with a perched water table, Nicholville silts and very fine sands on the lake plain and low benches, and Croghan and Adams sands on the deltas and outwash. Colton gravels occupy the terraces and eskers. Dense till and fragipan like density in the Malone profile mean water sits in the upper soil rather than draining through it. South of Malone the ground rises into Adirondack gneiss under thin stony till, with Berkshire and Becket on the slopes and shallow Tunbridge and Lyman near the ridges around Santa Clara, Saranac Lake and St. Regis. Extensive wetland and peat occupies the flats between.
The northern farm belt is workable but wet. Malone dense till holds water in the upper profile, so pad subgrade should assume undercut, geotextile separation and imported structural fill rather than compacted native material, and both collection trench and foundation excavation should be priced for dewatering and for a spring window when the ground will not carry equipment. Nicholville silts are erodible and demand early stabilization and strong perimeter control under the state construction general permit. Croghan, Adams and Colton terraces are the exception and give free draining pad platforms and on site subbase where a site can be shifted onto them. Access roads across the till flats need generous stone depth and geogrid at soft crossings. Moving south into the Park the scope shifts to shallow rock, hammer excavation and wetland avoidance. Frost protection should run well below forty eight inches and earthwork should close before freeze up.
Full detail on the Franklin County market is on the Franklin County battery storage civil page.
Concrete is placed by our subcontractor partners under the same contract, so the foundations follow the earthwork without a separate award. We price the civil package as one scope under one contract, which gives the EPC a single point of responsibility for the civil critical path instead of managing separate clearing, earthwork, and underground subcontracts.
Battery storage in New York is governed by Section 1207 of the 2025 Fire Code of New York State, which the State Fire Prevention and Building Code Council adopted on July 25, 2025 with an effective date of December 31, 2025. Section 1207 carries material based on the 2023 edition of NFPA 855 and renumbers what the 2020 code placed at Section 1206. Systems must be listed to UL 9540. Large scale fire testing under UL 9540A, reported to and approved by the fire code official, is what permits reduced separation distances and quantities above the table limits, and a hazard mitigation analysis is required to exceed the maximum allowable quantity. Outdoor installations carry a ten foot clearance to lot lines, public ways, buildings, stored combustibles, and other exposure hazards, with ten feet of combustible vegetation cleared on each side. New York added a mandatory peer review at Section 1207.12 for systems above the Table 1207.5 quantities, covering the site plan, the emergency operations plan, and the UL 9540A report. Those provisions fix pad layout and access road geometry before any earthwork is priced.
Battery storage siting in New York runs on the Fire Code of New York State, which adopts the International Fire Code provisions for stationary energy storage, together with NFPA 855 and the UL 9540A test reporting the authority having jurisdiction will ask for. The civil consequences are set early and they are ours to build.
We build to the approved civil drawings and the fire code commentary that comes with the permit. We do not stamp the design.
Local law. The Adirondack Explorer's September 2, 2026 survey records the Town of Bellmont and the Town of St. Armand as having adopted battery storage moratoriums and the Town of Santa Clara as having local laws that will not allow battery energy storage. No moratorium is recorded for the northern farm belt towns of Chateaugay, Fort Covington or Malone as of September 2026.
Backwell superintendents, project managers, and lead operators run every site. We mobilize company equipment for the core scope and scale each project with leased production fleets, qualified regional subcontractors, and agency-placed field staff, all under Backwell supervision and a single contract.
Contractor licensing. New York does not issue a statewide general contractor license for commercial construction. Licensing is handled locally, so individual cities, towns, and counties may require contractor registration or a local license, and a few trades are licensed at the state level, including asbestos handling and crane operation. Separately, contractors and subcontractors performing public work, and work covered by Article 8 of the Labor Law, must be registered with the New York State Department of Labor under its statewide contractor registry, which took effect December 30, 2024. Owners, EPCs, and integrators on battery storage projects will typically ask for that DOL registration number along with insurance and, where required, bonding.
Construction stormwater. SPDES General Permit for Stormwater Discharges from Construction Activity, permit number GP-0-25-001, issued by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. It took effect January 29, 2025, replacing GP-0-20-001, and runs through January 28, 2030. Coverage is triggered at one acre of soil disturbance, or less if part of a larger common plan, and requires a Notice of Intent plus a SWPPP prepared and implemented under the DEC design manual. Coverage under the prior permit did not carry over automatically, so active sites had to refile. Backwell carries the SWPPP scope, installs and maintains the controls, keeps the inspection log, and closes the permit out with final stabilization.
Prevailing wage. Standalone battery storage sits outside New York Labor Law Section 224-d. That section applies to a covered renewable energy system as defined in Public Service Law Section 66-p, and that definition lists generating technologies only, so energy storage is not included and Section 224-d contains no storage clause. Prevailing wage still reaches many storage projects by other routes. Labor Law Section 224-a expressly excludes an energy storage system with a capacity equal to or under five megawatts alternating current, which means a larger storage system on a privately contracted project that meets the public funds and cost tests can be covered. The Public Service Commission order of June 20, 2024 establishing the updated energy storage goal states that projects of one megawatt alternating current and larger will be subject to prevailing wage requirements, so incentivized projects carry it as a program condition rather than by statute. Storage co-located with a covered renewable generator follows that generator. Separately, contractors and subcontractors performing public work, and work covered by Article 8 of the Labor Law, must be registered with the New York State Department of Labor under the statewide contractor registry effective December 30, 2024. The applicable trigger should be confirmed project by project. Backwell produces certified payroll, pays the applicable wage determination, and supports apprenticeship labor-hour compliance.
All New York battery storage civil work or the New York solar civil cluster.
Send plans, a scope of work, and the schedule through the form below or call (315) 400-2654. We review the civil package, walk the site if it is at that stage, and return a scoped proposal with a schedule of values, stated fill allowances, and unit rates for overages. A one-page capability statement is available for prequalification files.
Backwell contracts the complete civil package for utility solar around Fort Covington, NY: clearing and grubbing, mass grading, access roads, collection trenching, SWPPP and erosion control, fencing, and substation civil, all under one contract. Fort Covington, NY utility solar civil site work →
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