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(Bloomberg) — The bulk of the money from BP Plc’s record settlement will go to the five states along the Gulf of Mexico whose shores were blackened in the 2010 oil spill.

From Florida to Texas, the deal will help rebuild communities and restore publicly owned natural resources destroyed by the worst offshore spill in U.S. history. In addition to the coastal damage, thousands of water fowl, sea turtles, wild animals and marine life were killed.

“You break it, you pay for it -– that’s how this is supposed to work,” David Yarnold, president of the National Audubon Society, said in an e-mail. “It’s time to heal the wounds that BP tore in Gulf Coast ecosystems and communities.”
Payments to the states will spread out past 2030. Here’s how the states’ share of the $18.7 billion will be spent:

* Louisiana: The state bore the full brunt when the well exploded 40 miles off its coastline and it will get the biggest share, $6.8 billion over 18 years. There’s $5 billion to restore publicly owned marshes, estuaries, fisheries and wildlife populations, and $1 billion for state coffers depleted by lower tax revenues and increased costs after the spill. The rest is for rebuilding coastal communities and infrastructure and legal fees and assessment costs.

“This is a big deal,” Louisiana Congressman Garrett Graves, who participated in the state’s environmental assessment process after the spill, told reporters in Baton Rouge, the state’s capital. “We have been up against a PR effort that has been distorting what has happened. Our state’s economy, our culture, is based upon this coast. It’s the worst place this could have happened.”

* Florida: About $2 billion of the $3.25 billion BP will pay the state — where oil soaked about a fifth of its 790-mile shoreline — will go to cover losses by the government after tourists fled the beaches, deep-water drilling rigs sat idle and offshore fisheries were cordoned off. About $680 million will go to repair natural resources and $572 million for coastal restoration projects.

* Alabama: The state will get almost $2 billion, with $1 billion going to its general fund for economic damages to be paid over 18 years. It’ll also receive $599 million of BP’s Clean Water Act penalties.

* Mississippi: The state’s $1.6 billion share includes $750 million tagged for government budgetary shortfalls caused by the spill, $296 million for restoring natural resources damages, and $582 million for environmental and community rebuilding projects.

*Texas: The Lone Star state had little damage to its shoreline but lots of harm to oilfield and fishing communities. It’ll receive $818 million, of which $150 million will go to natural-resources restoration and almost three times that will be used for community and small-scale environmental restoration projects.

*Gulf of Mexico: BP will spend $350 million on region-wide environmental restoration projects and $1.2 billion on projects to revitalize the health of the Gulf’s open waters.

BP is “getting off easy” compared to how much Exxon Mobil Corp. paid for the much-smaller tanker spill in Alaska, according to Florida environmental group Oceana vice president Jacqueline Savitz. Using the math from the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989, BP could have faced $30 billion in Clean Water Act penalties and natural resource damages alone, she said in an e- mail.
Thursday’s settlement “pales in comparison to what BP owes,” she said.

The case is In Re: Oil Spill by the Oil Rig “Deepwater Horizon” in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010; 2:10-md-2179; U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana (New Orleans).

–With assistance from Della Hasselle in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

To contact the reporters on this story: Margaret Cronin Fisk in Detroit at mcfisk@bloomberg.net; Laurel Brubaker Calkins in Houston at laurel@calkins.us.com To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net Heather Smith