"For the past twenty years, the Chesapeake Bay Program partners have been committed to achieving and maintaining water quality conditions necessary to support living resources throughout the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. The 1983 Chesapeake Bay Agreement set the stage for the collaborative multi-state and federal partnership, and the 1987 Chesapeake Bay Agreement set the first quantitative nutrient reduction goals (Chesapeake Executive Council 1983, 1987). With the signing of the Chesapeake 2000 agreement (Chesapeake Executive Council 2000), the Chesapeake Bay Program partners committed to: Defining the water quality conditions necessary to protect aquatic living resources and then assigning load reductions for nitrogen and phosphorus to each major tributary; and Using a process parallel to that established for nutrients, determining the sediment load reductions necessary to achieve the water quality conditions that protect aquatic living resources, and assigning load reductions for sediment to each major tributary."