Complete civil packages for utility solar in Lonoke County, Arkansas: clearing, mass grading, access roads, collection trenching, SWPPP, fencing, and substation civil.
Backwell is a civil site work general contractor serving utility solar EPCs building in Lonoke County, Arkansas. We contract the complete civil package under one agreement, with Backwell superintendents and lead operators on site.
Lonoke County holds the larger share of Invenergy's proposed Downstream Solar Energy Center, roughly 5,600 of the project's 6,600 acres. The 300 MW project would tie into an Entergy Arkansas substation near Keo, with construction potentially starting in 2026 and commercial operation targeted for 2028. Lonoke is prime flat rice and row-crop ground, which means heavy drainage, ditch relocation, and haul road scope for the civil package. Project approval was still pending PILOT agreement and an offtaker at the time of reporting.
Publicly reported utility-scale solar in and around Lonoke 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.
Most of Lonoke County is Grand Prairie terrace: dead flat, heavily rice farmed, laser leveled, with Stuttgart and Crowley silt loams over a dense silty clay subsoil that water essentially cannot get through. That claypan is the defining feature of the ground, it perches water at shallow depth and it is why the prairie holds rice in the first place. Bayou Meto and its ditch network drains the middle and south of the county toward the Arkansas River lowlands, and irrigation reservoirs, tailwater recovery ditches and field levees are everywhere. The northwest around Cabot rises off the prairie onto rolling terrace ground with more relief and better internal drainage.
Clearing is minimal but removing rice levees, filling irrigation ditches, and abandoning wells and reservoirs is real scope that gets missed at bid time. The claypan means infiltration based stormwater does not work here, so plan on detention with a positive outfall into the Bayou Meto ditch system, and expect permitting attention on those outfalls. Subgrade is the problem: the surface silt loam softens quickly over an impermeable subsoil, so access roads and crane pads need undercut and geogrid or aggregate over fabric, and the site will not dry from below. Trench spoil is heavy clay with almost no reuse value as bedding, and low relief means erosion is less about slope velocity and more about ponding and sediment holding in standing water.
We price the package as one scope under one contract, so the EPC has a single point of responsibility for the civil critical path instead of managing separate clearing, earthwork, and utility subcontracts.
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. Yes. Arkansas licenses commercial construction through the Arkansas Contractors Licensing Board, which sits under the Arkansas Department of Labor and Licensing. A Commercial Contractor license is required to bid or perform commercial work at or above the statutory threshold, generally understood to be 50,000 dollars, with separate classifications that cover heavy construction and highway, street and bridge work, which are the classifications that typically apply to solar civil sitework. Applicants must show construction experience, business capability, and financial statements. Verify the exact classification and threshold with the board at labor.arkansas.gov before bidding.
Construction stormwater. Construction General Permit ARR150000, the NPDES construction stormwater general permit issued by the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment, Division of Environmental Quality, formerly ADEQ. Coverage is required for any land disturbance of one acre or more, and a Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan must be developed, implemented, and maintained for the life of construction. A Notice of Intent is filed with DEQ, and large sites of five acres or more require full NOI review rather than automatic coverage. Backwell carries the SWPPP scope, installs and maintains the controls, keeps the inspection log, and closes the permit out with final stabilization.
Prevailing wage. Federal Davis-Bacon prevailing wages apply to utility-scale solar at 1 MW and above through the Inflation Reduction Act wage and apprenticeship requirements, which owners pass down to civil subcontractors through certified payroll obligations. Arkansas has NO state prevailing wage law: Act 1068 of 2017 repealed Ark. Code 22-9-301 through 22-9-315, so state and local public works in Arkansas carry no separate state wage determination. Federally funded work in Arkansas still triggers Davis-Bacon. In practice this means a solar civil contractor in Arkansas needs certified payroll capability for the IRA requirement, not for a state program. For projects claiming the full ITC or PTC, Backwell produces Davis-Bacon certified payroll, pays the applicable wage determination, and supports apprenticeship labor-hour compliance.
All Arkansas solar civil work or the national utility solar civil page.
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.
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