A two-year process that was stalling cleanup efforts at a mine upstream of Southeast Alaska has come to a close, which could speed up remediation of the Tulsequah Chief Mine, reports Alaska Public Media. The Tulsequah Chief mine is in Canada, about 20 miles from the Alaska border near Juneau. It extracted zinc, copper and lead in the 1950s.

And ever since, rusty, acidic runoff from the mine’s tunnels and leftover waste rock has been flowing into a tributary of the Taku River, a major salmon-producing waterway. The British Columbia government has said it is committed to cleanup efforts. But in recent years, the process has been held up in court.

In 2016, a company that had hoped to get the mine going again, Chieftain Metals, filed for bankruptcy and was put into receivership. That means a third-party firm — West Face Capital — was managing the mine’s assets, hoping to recoup nearly $50 million of investments in the project.

Eventually, a Canadian court gave the investors a two-year deadline to ask for an extension on the receivership. That ended August 11.