In 1996, the mine's owner, Notre Development, announced plans to revive the Adams Mine proposal through the private sector. Later the same year, the Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris made significant changes to the province's Environmental Assessment Act - this resulted in dropping the requirements for a needs assessment and investigation of alternatives to developing a landfill. Technically, this was irrelevant to the Adams Mine proposal as it had already passed all assessments requested of the project. This gave the provincial government the sole authority to impose time and service limits on environmental assessments.