By CASSANDRA MICKENS / Associate Editor

COLUMBIANA — A company’s plan to mine coal under a section of Shelby County 270 west of Alabaster could close the sparsely traveled thoroughfare for a few years.

The Shelby County Commission in April will receive a formal resolution detailing an agreement between the county and Alabaster-based Jesse Creek Mining LLC.

“We have a mining company that’s interested in the western part of the county where there is some coal reserves,” Shelby County Engineer Randy Cole said during the commission’s regular meeting March 24.

“This road serves very few individual landowners, but it’s a primary access from the western part of the county into the Cahaba River Wildlife Management Area,” Cole said.

Cole said drivers would travel Shelby County 260 as a detour. The proposal guarantees that Shelby County 270 would be restored to county standards once mining is complete. Cole said he and District 3 Commissioner Jon Parker have been working with Jesse Creek Mining for the past few months. The mining project is in Parker’s district.

“We’ve been working with the mining company to come up with an equitable agreement that would allow them to close that road for a period of a few years, less than five hopefully,” Cole said. “I think the end result we’ll be quite pleased with.”