The National Orphaned/Abandoned Mines Advisory Committee was established by Mines Ministers in September of 2001 to move forward in addressing the issue of problematic abandoned and orphaned mines in Canada. One of the objectives of this Committee is:
To develop a plan to foster community involvement in decision-making about closure and reclamation standards, and to ensure that targeted end-use and reclamation standards are acceptable to local communities.

The Committee set up a Community Involvement Task Force to investigate how to reach the above objective. As part of their investigative process, the Task Force commissioned a preliminary study to characterize key issues and identify potential case studies that would provide lessons on community involvement in the remediation of abandoned mines in Canada.

After reviewing the preliminary study,¹ the Task Force commissioned this study to provide a more detailed examination of the community involvement process at four contaminated and/or unsafe sites in Canada. As well, the Task Force requested information on community involvement processes used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to draw on the lessons learned by our neighbours to the south.

In this report, we first examine the community involvement processes related to three abandoned/orphaned mines or mine sites in Canada. These include: 1) Deloro, Ontario; 2) the Giant Mine in the Northwest Territories; and 3) the Mount Washington Mine in British Columbia. The report continues with a review of lessons learned from community involvement in the clean-up of Superfund and other contaminated sites in the U.S.A. discussion section summarizes the common themes and lessons learned from the Canadian and U.S. examples. Finally, the report concludes with a set of recommendations on further research required on community involvement in abandoned/orphaned mine site remediation.