Complete civil packages for utility solar near Saranac Lake, NY: clearing, mass grading, access roads, collection trenching, SWPPP, fencing, and substation civil.
Backwell contracts complete civil site work packages for utility solar EPCs building near Saranac Lake in Franklin County, New York. One contract covers clearing through final stabilization, with Backwell field leadership on site.
NY 3 and NY 86 inside the Adirondack Park, the labor and services center for the southern half of the county. Aggregate comes from small local pits and haul distances are long, which shows up directly in stone unit pricing.
Publicly reported utility-scale solar in and around Franklin 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.
A long north to south county with two unrelated landscapes. The northern third around Malone, Bangor, Fort Covington and Bombay is flat lowland: sandy and gravelly outwash plains mapped as Adams and Colton loamy sands, silty Nicholville and Malone soils, and pockets of marine clay near the Salmon and St. Regis rivers. South of that the county is Adirondack Park, gneiss and anorthosite bedrock with thin stony till, frequent outcrop and boulder, and thousands of acres of peat and wetland around Saranac Lake and Tupper Lake. Drainage in the north runs to the St. Lawrence through the Salmon, Little Salmon, Chateaugay, Deer and St. Regis rivers, all with sandy beds and flashy spring flows.
Practical civil ground is the northern lowland. Sandy outwash compacts well and drains fast, but it ravels in open trench and moves as sheet flow when stripped, so plan erosion blanket and quick seeding instead of relying on silt fence. Where the clay pockets show up near the rivers, expect the same weak, sensitive behavior seen along the St. Lawrence. In the Adirondack portion the cost drivers are heavy grubbing of mixed hardwood and conifer, rock excavation and blasting for shallow gneiss, boulder handling in the till, and near constant wetland crossings with Adirondack Park Agency jurisdiction on top of state and federal permits. Frost depth here is the deepest in New York and the build window is short, so foundation and trench depths and the schedule both need to reflect it.
Full detail on the Franklin County market is on the Franklin County solar civil page.
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. New York does not issue a statewide general contractor license for commercial construction. Licensing is handled locally, so individual cities, towns, and counties may require contractor registration or a local license, and a few trades are licensed at the state level, including asbestos handling and crane operation. Separately, contractors and subcontractors performing public work, and work covered by the renewable energy prevailing wage statute, must be registered with the New York State Department of Labor under its statewide contractor registry, which took effect December 30, 2024. Owners and EPCs on solar projects will typically ask for that DOL registration number along with insurance and, where required, bonding.
Construction stormwater. SPDES General Permit for Stormwater Discharges from Construction Activity, permit number GP-0-25-001, issued by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. It took effect January 29, 2025, replacing GP-0-20-001, and runs through January 28, 2030. Coverage is triggered at one acre of soil disturbance, or less if part of a larger common plan, and requires a Notice of Intent plus a SWPPP prepared and implemented under the DEC design manual. Coverage under the prior permit did not carry over automatically, so active sites had to refile. 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 that claim the full investment or production tax credit, so nearly every utility-scale solar job in New York is certified payroll work. On top of that, New York State has its own requirement: Labor Law Article 8 Section 224-d extends state prevailing wage, or a project labor agreement in lieu of it, to covered renewable energy systems, which New York State Department of Labor enforcement guidance applies to solar projects of 1 MW AC and larger that involve procurement of renewable energy credits by a public entity or a third party acting on its behalf. Because most large New York solar projects sell renewable energy credits to NYSERDA, 224-d is the practical baseline, and state certified payroll plus NYSDOL contractor registration come with it. A separate threshold of greater than five megawatts AC applies to other covered renewable energy systems, so the applicable trigger should be confirmed project by project. 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 York 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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