Complete civil packages for utility solar in Starke County, Indiana: 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 Starke County, Indiana. We contract the complete civil package under one agreement, with Backwell superintendents and lead operators on site.
Starke County hosts Mammoth North, the first completed phase of the Mammoth Solar program, which reached commercial operation in October 2024, and it shares the Dunns Bridge Solar II footprint with Jasper County. The county has already absorbed a large solar workforce and has an established permitting and road use track record, which lowers friction for follow-on phases. With Mammoth Central and Mammoth South building immediately to the south in Pulaski County, laydown, haul routes, and crews move across the county line continuously. Agrivoltaic operation with grazing on the completed phase also drives ongoing site access and fencing work.
Publicly reported utility-scale solar in and around Starke 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.
Starke County is almost entirely Kankakee Outwash Plain and the bed of the drained Grand Kankakee Marsh, some of the flattest ground in Indiana at 680 to 720 feet, broken by relict sand dune ridges that rise ten to thirty feet. The Kankakee River forms the north boundary as a straightened, leveed channel, and the Yellow River crosses the middle of the county past Knox. Soils are Plainfield, Brems and Morocco sands on the ridges, Maumee and Gilford wet sands in the flats, and Adrian and Houghton mucks in the old marsh basins, with organic depths that can run several feet. The whole county is on an engineered drainage system of legal ditches and tile, and the water table is shallow and responsive to rain.
Grubbing is minor across cropland but the muck basins are the schedule risk: organic soils will not carry loaded equipment, they settle differentially under pile racks and access roads, and they usually get undercut and replaced or bridged with geotextile and a thick stone section. Sand mass grading is fast and cut and fill balances easily, but every temporary road, laydown yard and crane path needs geogrid plus aggregate or it disappears in one wet week. Trenching is quick, yet sidewall collapse and shallow groundwater force shoring and dewatering, and trench spoil in clean sand will not stand. For erosion control, wind erosion and blowing sand dominate, so use tackified straw or hydromulch, temporary cover crop, and stone tracking pads. Anything near the Kankakee corridor pulls floodplain and levee district review, and every severed tile has to be mapped and reconnected.
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. Indiana does not issue a statewide general contractor or commercial building contractor license. Contractor licensing and registration is handled at the city and county level, so requirements vary by jurisdiction. Larger cities including Indianapolis, Evansville, Fort Wayne, and South Bend run their own contractor licensing or registration programs, generally requiring a fee, a contractor bond, general liability coverage, and workers compensation, with some jurisdictions also requiring an exam. Many rural solar host counties have no general contractor license at all, but a civil contractor should still expect county road use and haul route agreements, road maintenance bonds, county drainage board coordination on regulated drains and tile, and local building or improvement location permits. Verify the specific city or county requirement before mobilizing rather than assuming a state credential exists.
Construction stormwater. Construction Stormwater General Permit, known as the CSGP, issued by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, IDEM. It applies to construction activity disturbing one acre or more of total land area, and to smaller areas that are part of a larger common plan of development or sale. As of December 18, 2021 the CSGP replaced the prior program administered under 327 IAC 15-5, commonly called Rule 5. Coverage is obtained by filing a Notice of Intent, or NOI, with IDEM, supported by a stormwater pollution prevention plan. Local soil and water conservation districts and county or municipal MS4 programs typically review and inspect on IDEM's behalf, so a utility-scale solar site will usually deal with both IDEM and the county SWCD. Backwell carries the SWPPP scope, installs and maintains the controls, keeps the inspection log, and closes the permit out with final stabilization.
Prevailing wage. Indiana has no state prevailing wage law. The Indiana Common Construction Wage Act was repealed effective July 1, 2015, and the state has not replaced it, so there is no state level wage determination for public or private work. Federal Davis-Bacon prevailing wage still applies to federally funded work, and applies to utility-scale solar through the Inflation Reduction Act labor requirements: projects of 1 MW AC and larger must pay Davis-Bacon prevailing wages and meet registered apprenticeship ratios to claim the full value of the investment or production tax credit. In practice that means nearly every utility-scale solar project in Indiana is built on certified payroll with apprenticeship participation even though the state itself imposes nothing. Owners and EPCs will also often impose their own project labor agreements or workforce commitments on top of the federal requirement. 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 Indiana 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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