The state will use the money to help pay for construction of the $309 million Maurepas Swamp freshwater diversion project in St. John the Baptist Parish, which is to be built adjacent to, and as environmental mitigation for, the West Shore Lake Pontchartrain hurricane levee, now under construction.

The money was Louisiana’s 32% share of about $27 million that claims administrators were unable to distribute as part of dual Halliburton and Transocean settlements approved in June 2016, and ended this June.

The two settlements, totaling $1.24 billion, followed a separate, more than $7 billion settlement agreement between BP and private claimants in 2012.

One involved Halliburton Energy Services Inc. and Halliburton Co., which oversaw cement pouring during the drilling of BP’s Macondo oil well south of New Orleans.

The other involved Triton Asset Leasing GmbH, Transocean Deepwater Inc., Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling Inc., and Transocean Holdings LLC, which owned the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that exploded and sank after the Macondo well blew out on April 20, 2010.

The Halliburton and Transocean claimants were divided into “new class” and “old class” categories, with “new class” members eligible for damages caused to real or personal property, and to commercial fishers. The category also included groups that were not included in the original BP settlement, including local governments, gaming, finance, insurance, real estate development, defense industries, and oil and gas entities, as well as individuals and entities who had opted out of the original settlement.

The ”new class” category included one subcategory for seafood-related claims and for unclaimed payments that were authorized earlier to go to Gulf Coast states. When all of the payouts were completed, there was still $1.34 million left in this subcategory.

A second “new class” subcategory included real and personal property claims totaling $753.8 million. Because of unresolved claims, $8.9 million remained in this category in June.

The “old class” members included several hundred thousand businesses and individuals who had earlier filed economic loss claims. While authorized payments for this group totaled $337.6 million, by the end of the claims process this June, about $17.4 million could not be distributed.

In June, claims administrators informed U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, who has overseen all of the BP spill-related settlement cases, that attempting to redistribute the leftover money among all the claimants could take another 36 months and would likely result in most class members only receiving another $21 to $45, after 25% in attorneys’ fee were deducted.

Court-appointed claims administrator Carl Juneau recommended that the money instead be given to the Gulf Coast states through the Gulf Coast Restoration Trust Fund, which was set up to distribute civil Clean Water Act fine money from the spill to states and federal agencies under the RESTORE Act. In this case, however, the money was divided among only the states, based loosely on their spill damage, with Louisiana receiving 32% and Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Texas each receiving 17%.

Louisiana has received a greater percentage of both the RESTORE Act funds and a separate Natural Resource Damage Assessment claims fund because it experienced more damage from the spill.

That includes $190 million of RESTORE Act fine money that already has been approved to be spent on the Maurepas project. The remainder of the money for the project will come from other sources, including offshore oil money coming to the state as part of the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, state surplus funds and annual capital outlay requests.

Part of the cost of building the diversion will also count towards the state’s 35% share of the cost of building the West Shore Lake Pontchartrain hurricane levee system.

Brad Miller, project manager for the diversion, said the state will advertise for bids next month for an initial construction contract to excavate the northern end of a two-mile channel that will run from part of the Maurepas Swamp north of Interstate 10 to the Hope Canal, and then to the Mississippi near Garyville, in St. John the Baptist Parish. When completed, the diversion will funnel about 2,000 cubic feet per second of freshwater from the river into the swamp, freshening water in the swamp and Lake Maurepas to improve the survival of cypress and tupelo trees.