Complete civil packages for utility solar in Washington 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 Washington County, Mississippi. We contract the complete civil package under one agreement, with Backwell superintendents and lead operators on site.
Washington County carries both solar and thermal generation civil work. Entergy's July 2026 renewable list shows Greer Solar at 170 MW under a purchase power agreement targeted for 2026. Separately, Entergy is building the 754 MW Delta Blues Advanced Power Station near Greenville, a multi year heavy civil job scheduled to come online in 2028, which keeps skilled sitework crews and inspection attention concentrated in the county. That combination makes Washington County one of the busiest generation construction markets in the Delta.
Publicly reported utility-scale solar in and around Washington 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.
Flat Mississippi River meander belt built as ridge and swale, with relief across an entire section often under five feet. Natural levee ridges along abandoned channels carry the lighter Commerce, Robinsonville and Crevasse soils, older meander ridges carry Dundee, Bosket and Dubbs, and the backswamp basins between them are Sharkey and Alligator clay, smectitic Vertisols that crack wide open in August and turn to mud in winter. Deer Creek threads through Leland and Hollandale on an abandoned Mississippi channel, and Lake Washington below Glen Allan is a large oxbow. Because there is effectively no natural grade, surface drainage depends entirely on a man-made grid of field ditches and tailwater ditches.
Clearing and grubbing is usually light since most of it is row crop with fence-line trees, but everything else depends on water management. Sharkey and Alligator clay have almost no bearing capacity wet and will not compact to a stable subgrade, so access roads, laydown and crane pads mean undercut, geotextile and imported stone, and every ton of that stone is trucked or barged in because there is no rock in the county. Mass grading is a matter of inches, not feet, and the real scope is preserving and re-establishing the existing ditch network so the finished site does not pond. Trenching digs easily and holds badly: cave-in in the wet season, brick-hard clods in late summer, and backfill that will not compact without moisture conditioning. Erosion control here is about ponding and suspended sediment in flat channels, so lean on ditch checks, sediment traps and fast cover rather than slope matting.
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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