The three members of Alaska’s congressional delegation are calling on President Joe Biden to take action against cross-border mining in British Columbia above several rivers in southeast Alaska.

In a joint letter to the President last week, U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Representative Mary Peltola expressed concern about the impacts mining projects in the Canadian province are having on U.S. communities and resources downstream.

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The letter said that without government action, Canadian mining activity could cause increasing harm to Alaska’s salmon runs and the environment. The letter was CC’d to the Secretary of State, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and several members of the International Joint Commission, which studies issues affecting waterways along the Canada-U.S. border.

The bipartisan delegation wrote that it has so far lobbied three different presidents for financial and environmental protection of the Taku, Stikine and Unuk rivers in southeast Alaska, which it said have been negatively impacted by Canadian mining projects on their headwaters.

The delegation is renewing its call for action after a recent infrastructure failure at a Yukon gold mine led to a landslide that released mine waste, including cyanide, into a nearby stream that is part of the transboundary Yukon River system. The Yukon government found in a water quality report that cyanide levels in some areas were sufficient to cause significant harm to aquatic life.

“The failure was caused by poor design and negligence,” the letter said, adding: “We are only now beginning to understand the true extent of the environmental impact, and each update is more disheartening than the last.”

Murkowski, Peltola and Sullivan said they recognize that “the minerals from Canadian mines are a key element of the national security of the United States and its allies and an important component of resource development.” But they said sacrificing our environment for energy and national security is not a necessary trade-off.

That’s why they’re calling on Biden to publicly demand that Canada clean up an abandoned mine in British Columbia that the delegation says has been polluting international waters for decades. They’re also calling on all parties involved – Alaska, British Columbia, the US, Canada and indigenous groups – to create a binding and enforceable international framework within the International Commission to avoid disputes of this kind in the future.