[en] The Beaverlodge uranium mining and milling facility, located near Uranium City in northern Saskatchewan, operated for a period of thirty-two years between 1950 and 1982, making it one of the longest operating facilities of its type in Canada. Ore was extracted from the ma in underground mine and from smaller underground and open pit satellite deposits in a ratio of 94% and 6% respectively. Decommissioning activities consisted of four phases, shutdown, salvage and reclamation which occurred from 1982-1985, and the current transition monitoring phase from 1985 to present. Following transition monitoring to prove that the system is behaving as expected, licence revocation and hence completion of decommissioning is expected to occur. The plan to achieve delicensing from the federal Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and surface lease revocation from the provincial government is currently captured in a 10-year plan, 2003-2013. The main remaining objective of the decommissioning plan is to document the aquatic ecosystem recovery of the former tailings management facility (TMF), which consisted of two natural lakes, and of the two former underground satellite areas, Hab and Dubyna. Extensive environmental monitoring has been carried out in the receiving environment, Beaverlodge Lake, the former Dubyna mine area and the TMF. Recovery of the aquatic ecosystems is occurring within an environment containing above-background levels of natural radionuclides. This makes Beaverlodge, with its relatively clean ore and long history of natural recovery, one of the better places to study low-level radioactive environmental biological effects. The Dubyna area has above background uranium concentrations in the water, sediment and fish, and a benthic invertebrate community similar to reference. In the receiving environment, Beaverlodge Lake, metal concentrations are highest with the deeper sediment. This trend fits well with the increased impacts of 32-years of operation followed by reduced impact in 20-years of transition. The assessment of ecosystem recovery and other aspects of the delicensing and surface lease revocation, allows for reflection on 'lessons learned,' from operational procedures as defined by the standards of the time and decommissioning activities carried out to date. This paper documents the recovery of the aquatic ecosystems impacted during the operating phase, comparing the data to reference areas and current criteria. In addition, lessons learned for consideration by current operations are reviewed. (author)