Complete civil packages for battery energy storage near Medina, 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 Medina in Orleans County, New York. One contract covers site preparation through final stabilization, with Backwell field leadership on site.
Medina sits on Route 31, Route 63 and Route 31A at the western end of the county with the Erie Canal and rail service, and it is the namesake of the Medina sandstone formation. National Grid serves the area through the Lyndonville 95 and Shelby 76 substations, where distribution scale battery systems have been interconnected. The Town of Shelby immediately south is a named host town for the permitted 200 MW Hemlock Ridge Solar facility. Shallow sandstone and dolostone here mean trenching and deep excavation should be priced as rock.
Publicly reported battery energy storage in and around Orleans 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.
Orleans County is almost entirely Ontario lake plain, nearly level ground stepping down toward Lake Ontario across a series of old shoreline ridges, of which the Ridge Road ridge is the most prominent. Fine textured lacustrine silt and clay dominates, with the Lakemont, Odessa, Churchville and Niagara series in the poorly drained flats and Appleton, Hilton and Ontario on the till rises and beach ridges. Alton and Palmyra gravelly soils follow the beach ridges and give the only consistently well drained ground in the county. Bedrock is Lockport dolostone and Queenston shale, shallow along the Niagara escarpment belt through Shelby and Medina, and the Medina sandstone quarried here gives the formation its name. Seasonal water tables sit within one to two feet of the surface across most of the flats, and natural drainage is slow. Frost design depth is forty two inches.
The controlling condition in Orleans County is water sitting on tight ground, not rock and not slope. Clay rich Lakemont and Odessa subgrades lose strength quickly when wet and pump under loaded trucks, so battery enclosure pads generally need undercut and replacement with imported structural fill over a geotextile separation layer, and access roads need a full stone section with positive ditching rather than a thin cap on subgrade. Underdrains below pad elevation are the normal answer to the seasonal high water table. Earthwork is nearly flat, which keeps mass grading volumes low, but it also means stormwater has no natural fall, so outlets, swales and detention have to be engineered and permitted carefully. Along the escarpment through Shelby and Medina, shallow dolostone and sandstone can turn trenching into rock work, so borings ahead of bid matter.
Full detail on the Orleans County market is on the Orleans 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. Orleans County has no county wide battery ordinance and no Orleans County municipality appears in the statewide battery moratorium database as of the August 2026 update. The Town of Barre has extensive experience with major renewable siting through the Heritage Wind and Hemlock Ridge proceedings, and local review of battery facilities below the 94-c threshold runs through town zoning and site plan approval.
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 Medina, NY: clearing and grubbing, mass grading, access roads, collection trenching, SWPPP and erosion control, fencing, and substation civil, all under one contract. Medina, NY utility solar civil site work →
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