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BATON ROUGE, La. (WGNO) – BP has agreed to pay Louisiana $6.8 billion to settle state and federal claims from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Louisiana attorney general Buddy Caldwell and other state officials announced Thursday.  The settlement is part of a $18.7 billion deal between five Gulf Coast states.

“Since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill — the largest environmental disaster in our nation’s history — the Justice Department has been fully committed to holding BP accountable, to achieving justice for the American people and to restoring the environment and the economy of the Gulf region at the expense of those responsible and not the American taxpayer,” U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement released by the Department of Justice.

The more than $6.8 billion included for Louisiana is comprised of the following components:
• $5 billion for natural resource damages (includes $368 million in previously allocated early restoration);
• A minimum of approximately $787 million for Clean Water Act civil penalties distributed through the RESTORE Act (Louisiana’s portion of the RESTORE Council distributed funds has yet to be determined); and
• $1 billion for state economic damages.

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant announced Mississippi’s compensation over Twitter. He tweeted his state will get around $2.2 billion.

Alabama will receive approximately $2.3 billion, according to Gov. Robert Bentley’s twitter. The tweets state the money will be used to facilitate coastal restoration projects and cover statewide economic damages Alabama suffered.

State and federal officials hope to finalize the agreement by early 2016. When that happens is will bring Louisiana’s total recovery from the Deepwater Horizon disaster to approximately $10 billion.