Complete civil packages for utility solar in Walworth County, Wisconsin: 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 Walworth County, Wisconsin. We contract the complete civil package under one agreement, with Backwell superintendents and lead operators on site.
Walworth County carries the southern half of the Whitewater Solar Project, in the Townships of Whitewater and LaGrange. It is the same 180 MWac facility approved under docket 9828-CE-100, with grading starting April 2026 and commissioning in the summer of 2027 ahead of a February 2028 in service date. Walworth sits in the same southern Wisconsin interconnection corridor that has drawn repeated utility scale solar filings, so a contractor mobilized here has follow on work within a short haul radius. Local town level permitting and road use agreements matter as much as the state approval on projects in this county.
Publicly reported utility-scale solar in and around Walworth 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.
Walworth County is interlobate country caught between the Lake Michigan and Green Bay lobes, and the Kettle Moraine runs northeast to southwest through it with hummocky ice contact topography, kames, eskers, and deep gravel deposits. Lake Geneva, Delavan Lake, Whitewater Lake, and the Lauderdale Lakes all sit in kettle basins, while the west and southwest around Darien and Sharon smooth out into ground moraine and till plain drained by Turtle Creek. Soils include Casco, Rodman, Fox, and Warsaw on the gravelly ice contact and outwash ground, Kidder, McHenry, Ringwood, and Miami on the till uplands, and Pella, Sebewa, and Houghton in the kettles and closed depressions.
Onsite granular material is excellent and gravel pits are everywhere, so base course, pipe bedding, and road stone are cheap and short haul, which is a real cost advantage over the sand plain counties. The tradeoff is that hummocky ice contact terrain drives large earthwork quantities to get workable grades, and cobble and boulder seams cause refusal and abrasion for trenchers and pile rigs. Many kettles are closed basins with no outlet, so stormwater has to be handled by infiltration rather than conveyance, and shoreland and lake protection rules around the recreational lakes make sediment discharge a high visibility issue.
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. Wisconsin does not issue a statewide general contractor or commercial building contractor license. Commercial civil sitework is not licensed at the state level: it is controlled through local building and site permits, Department of Safety and Professional Services plan review for buildings and structures, and Department of Natural Resources permits for stormwater and any wetland or waterway work. State credentials from DSPS apply to one and two family dwelling contractors, through the Dwelling Contractor Certification and the Dwelling Contractor Qualifier, and to the separately licensed trades such as electrical, plumbing, and HVAC. For a solar civil package, the practical prequalification gates are insurance, experience modification rate, bonding capacity, and EPC prequalification rather than a state contractor license number. Confirm town, village, and county requirements site by site, since some municipalities require contractor registration or road use and haul route agreements.
Construction stormwater. Wisconsin Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (WPDES) Construction Site Storm Water Runoff General Permit, storm water associated with land disturbing construction activity, General Permit No. WI-S067831-6, issued by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources under Chapter NR 216, Subchapter III of the Wisconsin Administrative Code. Coverage is required for most construction projects disturbing one or more acres, and the applicant submits a Notice of Intent along with an erosion control plan and a post construction storm water management plan. Backwell carries the SWPPP scope, installs and maintains the controls, keeps the inspection log, and closes the permit out with final stabilization.
Prevailing wage. Wisconsin repealed its own state prevailing wage law. The requirement was eliminated for local government public works projects effective January 1, 2017, and for state and state highway projects effective in 2017, so there is no state prevailing wage schedule applying to private utility scale solar construction in Wisconsin. Federal Davis-Bacon wage determinations still apply through the Inflation Reduction Act prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements for projects of 1 MW alternating current and above that claim the increased investment or production tax credit, and virtually every project in this list is far above that threshold. In practice that means certified payroll, Davis-Bacon classification, and registered apprenticeship participation are contract conditions flowed down by the EPC even though no state law compels them. Project labor agreements or owner specific labor commitments can add union scale requirements on top, so confirm the labor terms in each EPC's subcontract rather than assuming the absence of a state law means open shop. 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 Wisconsin 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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