Complete civil packages for utility solar in Madison County, Mississippi: 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 Madison County, Mississippi. We contract the complete civil package under one agreement, with Backwell superintendents and lead operators on site.
Madison County is the center of gravity for Mississippi load growth. Amazon Web Services broke ground on two data center complexes at the Madison County Megasite in May 2024 and has since expanded its Mississippi commitment, which is the reason Entergy Mississippi is adding roughly 650 MW of new renewable generation. Ragsdale Solar Park, built by EDP Renewables North America and fully contracted to Amazon, sits in this county and feeds directly into Entergy's transmission system. Expect continued solar and substation civil work in and around the Megasite corridor as the data center campuses phase in.
Publicly reported utility-scale solar in and around Madison 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.
Two very different landforms meet in Madison County. North and west of I-55 the uplands are loess-mantled ridges and side slopes over Tertiary sediments, mapped in Loring, Memphis, Providence and Grenada silt loams, several of which carry a fragipan roughly 18 to 30 inches down. East and south the county sits on the Jackson Group, and the Yazoo Clay is at or near the surface. MDEQ has documented Yazoo Clay as the shrink-swell problem formation of the Jackson metro area, and the derived prairie soils are the Vaiden and Kipling clays. Drainage runs west to the Big Black River and southeast to the Pearl River and Ross Barnett Reservoir, with Falaya, Collins and Convent soils on those bottoms.
Yazoo Clay is the design driver, not a footnote. It moves seasonally, so pile embedment, refusal on hard dry clay and heave in wet clay all have to be tested rather than assumed, and any access road built directly on it will pump and rut under loaded trucks. Undercut and cap with imported stone instead of trying to compact native clay to a stable subgrade. On the loess side the fragipan perches water, so cuts that daylight the pan seep, spring subgrade goes soft, and bare loess slopes gully in a single storm: clear in blocks and get temporary seed and hay down right behind the dozers. Trenching is fast in loess and slow in the clay, where the trench holds water and the spoil will not backfill tight without moisture conditioning.
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. Commercial civil sitework in Mississippi requires a Commercial Certificate of Responsibility from the Mississippi State Board of Contractors. Mississippi law makes it unlawful to contract or subcontract any portion of a public or private construction project equal to or exceeding $50,000 unless the contractor or subcontractor was duly licensed by the Board as of the date bids were submitted, so the license must be in hand before bid day, not at award. Applicants file a CPA reviewed or audited financial statement and hold the classification that matches the scope, and out of state firms must also be registered with the Mississippi Secretary of State.
Construction stormwater. Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), Environmental Permits Division, issues the Large Construction Storm Water General Permit, permit number MSR10, covering construction that disturbs five or more acres. Coverage is obtained by filing a Large Construction Notice of Intent (LCNOI) at least 30 days before construction starts, with a Certificate of Good Standing from the Mississippi Secretary of State dated within the prior 12 months. The property owner and the prime contractor carry joint and several responsibility for compliance, which puts the SWPPP, inspections, and BMP maintenance squarely on the civil contractor on a solar site. 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 registered apprenticeship requirements apply through the Inflation Reduction Act to qualifying projects of 1 MW alternating current and larger when the owner claims the increased credit rate, so certified payroll and apprentice ratio tracking are standard on Mississippi utility-scale solar even on privately owned sites. Mississippi does not layer a state prevailing wage law on top of that for construction contracts, and it is a right to work state, so the wage determination that governs is the federal one written into the EPC contract. Contractors should confirm the specific wage determination and apprenticeship language in each solicitation rather than assuming none applies. 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 Mississippi 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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