Since the mid-1980s, Blue Plains has reduced phosphorus to the limit of technology, primarily in support of water quality goals of the Potomac River, but also for the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay. The "Chesapeake Bay Agreement," reached in 1987, was a first step in reducing nitrogen discharge to waterways that are tributary to the Chesapeake Bay. Under the agreement, the Bay states and the District committed to voluntarily reduce nitrogen loads by 40 percent from their 1985 levels. Blue Plains was the first plant to achieve that goal. Furthermore, in every year since the full-scale implementation of the Biological Nitrogen Removal (BNR) process was completed in 2000, Blue Plains has every year successfully achieved and exceeded that goal of a 40 percent reduction. In Fiscal Year 2009, the BNR process at Blue Plains reduced the nitrogen load by more than 58 percent.