Complete civil packages for utility solar in Sandoval County, New Mexico: 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 Sandoval County, New Mexico. We contract the complete civil package under one agreement, with Backwell superintendents and lead operators on site.
Sandoval County is the Albuquerque metro's utility-scale solar corridor and is driven by data center load. The 190 MW TAG Solar plus Storage facility near Rio Rancho, 140 MW of solar with 50 MW of batteries on roughly 1,000 acres, was completed in August 2025 by Exus Renewables to serve Meta's Los Lunas data center through the PNM grid, and it supported more than 250 temporary construction jobs. Exus also operates additional solar generation in the county. Proximity to Albuquerque labor, aggregate suppliers and I-25 makes Sandoval a practical staging base for crews working multiple central New Mexico sites.
Publicly reported utility-scale solar in and around Sandoval 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.
Sandoval spans three different geologic worlds. On the east side it is Rio Grande rift basin fill, the sandy and gravelly Santa Fe Group under Rio Rancho and along US 550, capped in places by caliche and cut by deep arroyos. Moving west and north it becomes Colorado Plateau: mesas and cuestas on Cretaceous sandstone and shale, with badland exposures and gypsiferous Triassic and Jurassic redbeds around San Ysidro. The far northwest rises into the Nacimiento uplift and the Jemez volcanic field. The Witt series has its type location in Sandoval County, a deep, well drained silty soil on fan terraces, piedmonts, bajadas, and mesas with a calcic horizon between roughly 25 and 53 inches, and it is a fair proxy for the mesa ground. Sheppard eolian fine sand, Persayo on shale, Penistaja, Bluepoint, and Travessilla on rimrock all map in the county. Drainage is ephemeral, headward cutting arroyos into the Rio Grande, Jemez, and Rio Puerco.
Clearing is pinyon and juniper on the higher mesas and sage or grass on the basin fill, so grubbing volumes vary a lot across a single site. Mass grading in the Santa Fe Group is straightforward blade and scraper work in sand and gravel, but the material is non cohesive and needs moisture control and confinement to hit density. The calcic horizon under Witt type ground is a rip to break rock decision that should be settled with test pits before you price it, because it moves cut productivity sharply. Where redbed shale and gypsum are near surface around San Ysidro, watch sulfate attack on concrete and the possibility of solution features. The dominant civil risk countywide is arroyo incision: existing headcuts will migrate into your access roads and trench alignments, so armor crossings and build permanent crossings rather than temporary fords. Erosion control has to survive high intensity monsoon cells; use rock lined channels and sediment basins over fabric perimeter controls.
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. New Mexico requires a contractor license issued by the Regulation and Licensing Department, Construction Industries Division (CID), for work meeting the statutory definition of a contractor. Commercial civil sitework is generally carried out under the GB-98 general building classification for commercial and residential building work, or under the GA series for heavy and highway type work, where GA-98 covers asphalt, bitumen and concrete construction and carries the authority of the GA-1 through GA-5 classifications. A qualifying party must sit for the applicable trade and business and law exams, and a contractor bond, currently 10,000 dollars, is required before CID will issue the license. An out of state contractor should confirm the exact classification match for its scope, earthwork, grading, trenching, roads and foundations, directly with CID before bidding, since the classification map is scope specific.
Construction stormwater. New Mexico is not an authorized NPDES state. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6 in Dallas, is the NPDES permitting authority for all facilities in New Mexico, so construction sites disturbing one acre or more are covered under the federal EPA Construction General Permit (CGP), with a SWPPP prepared and a Notice of Intent filed through EPA's electronic NOI (eNOI) system. The New Mexico Environment Department Surface Water Quality Bureau, Point Source Regulation Section, performs compliance inspections on behalf of EPA and handles Clean Water Act Section 401 certification, and reports go back to EPA Region 6. New Mexico legislation has given NMED statutory authority to move toward a state administered NPDES equivalent program, so contractors should confirm at bid time whether the federal CGP or a newly effective state permit governs the specific 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 apprenticeship requirements apply through the Inflation Reduction Act to projects above 1 MW that claim the increased ITC or PTC rate, which covers essentially every utility-scale solar project in this list, so certified payroll and registered apprentice ratios should be assumed on the civil scope. On top of that, New Mexico has its own state prevailing wage law, the Public Works Minimum Wage Act, administered by the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions, Labor Relations Division, which sets wage decisions for public works contracts above the statutory threshold. Privately owned utility-scale solar is generally not a public work under that Act, but it can be pulled in where a public entity, state or local funding, or a public land or municipal utility element is part of the deal, for example projects contracted to a county or municipal offtaker. Confirm with the owner at bid time which wage determination governs, and expect certified payroll reporting either way. 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 New Mexico 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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