Complete civil packages for utility solar in Fulton County, Illinois: 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 Fulton County, Illinois. We contract the complete civil package under one agreement, with Backwell superintendents and lead operators on site.
Fulton County hosts Pleasantville Solar Park, a 150 MW EDP Renewables facility that reached operation in November 2025, one of the newest large solar builds in western Illinois. Fulton County has significant former mined and reclaimed ground, which is being marketed for renewable reuse and carries unusual geotechnical and grading conditions. That kind of ground rewards contractors who can price real earthwork rather than a per-acre average. EDP Renewables maintains an active Illinois development pipeline.
Publicly reported utility-scale solar in and around Fulton 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.
Fulton County is the most broken terrain in west central Illinois: a loess covered Illinoian till upland deeply dissected by the Spoon River and its tributaries, dropping east to the Illinois River bluff line and floodplain. Upland and bluff soils are the western Illinois loess series, Fayette, Rozetta, Sylvan, and Hickory on slopes ranging from gentle ridge crests to steep wooded valley sides, with Sawmill, Lawson, and Beaucoup in the bottoms. Overlaying all of that is the largest surface coal mined landscape in the state, with extensive spoil, made land, and reclaimed mine map units around Canton, Cuba, Fiatt, Bryant, and Banner, plus mine created water bodies. Along the river the ground gives way to floodplain, backwater lakes, and levee and drainage district land at Banner Marsh, Rice Lake, and Emiquon.
Site selection matters more here than in flat counties, because usable flat ground is limited to ridge crests and reclaimed mine benches, and everything else is either steep or floodplain. Loess slopes are the erosion problem of the state: they cut cleanly and then gully hard, so grading needs benching, slope drains, immediate cover, and sediment basins sized for real runoff volume, not minimum practice. On old mine ground the geotech is the risk item, since spoil bearing capacity is highly variable, fill depths are unpredictable, buried highwalls and slurry areas occur, and pile and foundation design cannot be based on a handful of borings. Clearing along the valley slopes and mine land is genuine timber and brush work with disposal volume, not the light stripping typical of row crop counties.
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. Illinois does not issue a statewide general contractor, building, or civil sitework license. There is no state license to hold for commercial earthwork, grading, access roads, or site utilities on a solar project. Licensing for general construction is handled locally, so requirements come from the municipality or county where the work sits, and some counties require only a registration or a bond for work outside city limits. A few individual trades are licensed at the state level, including roofing through the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation and plumbing through the Illinois Department of Public Health, but those do not apply to sitework scope. The registration that does matter statewide is the Illinois Department of Labor public works contractor registration, which is required to bid or perform public works subject to the Illinois Prevailing Wage Act and is paired with monthly certified payroll filing. Contractors performing work in state highway right of way also need Illinois Department of Transportation prequalification and permits.
Construction stormwater. General NPDES Permit No. ILR10, Stormwater Discharges from Construction Site Activities, issued by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Water. The current permit was finalized September 13, 2023, took effect September 22, 2023, and expires August 31, 2028. Coverage is required for any construction site disturbing one or more acres, or a site under one acre that is part of a larger common plan of development or sale, which captures essentially every utility-scale solar site. A Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan must be developed before construction starts, and a Notice of Intent must be submitted with enough lead time for a 30 day agency review period before construction begins. NOI fees are $700 for sites disturbing less than 5 acres and $1,000 for sites disturbing 5 or more acres. Many counties and municipalities, including several in the Chicago collar region, layer their own stormwater ordinance and permit on top of ILR10. 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 wage and apprenticeship requirements apply through the Inflation Reduction Act to projects of 1 MW AC and larger where the owner is claiming the full investment or production tax credit rate, and that flows down to civil subcontractors through the EPC contract. Illinois adds a second, independent state layer. The Illinois Prevailing Wage Act, 820 ILCS 130, sets county-by-county prevailing rates published by the Illinois Department of Labor, requires public works contractor registration, and requires monthly certified transcripts of payroll filed through the IDOL portal. The Climate and Equitable Jobs Act extended these labor standards into the private renewable market: payment of prevailing wage is required on essentially all non-residential wind and solar projects participating in state renewable energy credit programs, and utility-scale wind and solar projects are required to have a project labor agreement. In practice a bidder on Illinois utility-scale solar civil work should assume both Davis-Bacon and Illinois prevailing wage apply, that the higher of the two rates governs, and that a project labor agreement with the applicable building trades council will be a condition of award. 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 Illinois 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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