Lafayette County Supervisors Approve Permit to Expand Open-Pit Dirt Mining

The Lafayette County Board of Supervisors spent much of its Monday meeting locked in debate over a proposed expansion of an open-pit dirt-mining operation on County Road 122, ultimately approving a conditional-use permit for JWM Development to spread the operation across five parcels, contingent on state environmental approval.

The path to that vote was anything but straightforward. The meeting opened with an appeal from resident Jordan Daniels, who challenged a determination by Director of Development Services Joel Hollowell that dirt-mining activity at the site was already "grandfathered in" under the county's zoning ordinance. The Board sided with Daniels, voting to grant his appeal and effectively rejecting Hollowell's administrative interpretation.

Then, in a pivot that underscores the procedural complexity of the case, supervisors turned to the conditional-use permit application for the same property and approved it. Hollowell explained why both the appeal and the permit could coexist: the property owner, JWM Development, which purchased the site in 2025, had applied for the conditional-use permit "because they want to expand the operation beyond the historically used area and make the use fully compliant within the agricultural zoning district."

The expansion cannot begin in full until the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality approves the company's mining permit. JWM Development has already secured a small mining permit from MDEQ and plans to pursue a full mining permit that would include restoration plans for the entire site. A person identified only as Granberry told the Board that the surrounding roads were designed to accommodate heavy truck traffic, addressing one of the more practical concerns attached to any large-scale mining operation: the steady stream of loaded trucks that would travel those routes.

Not everyone in the room was without reservation. Attorney Reid Posey appeared during public comments representing a nearby landowner who farms 285 acres on County Road 101, raising the stakes for neighbors who share the road network with the proposed expansion.

The Monday meeting also included other significant land-use decisions. Supervisors voted to rezone property owned by developer JW McCurdy on County Road 321 from A-1 Rural to R-3 High Density Residential, and approved a conditional-use permit for Cedar Bucket, a storage, consignment and moving company, to operate an I-1 Light Industrial use in an A-1 Rural district on Mississippi Highway 6.

The County Road 122 mining expansion now moves to MDEQ, where the company's permit application, including its site restoration plan, will determine whether and when heavy equipment returns to those five parcels in force.