“Let’s put it this way: I’m still going to come in to work tomorrow,” Ms. Kraft said. “I think it’s still critically important for all of us to pay attention to how this money is spent.”

On the state level, the different sources of money come with different strings attached. Money paid in economic damages would primarily go into state coffers, while the natural resources damages payments must be spent on environmental restoration. The Clean Water Act penalties would mostly be divided up among the states and a Gulfwide council under a formula laid out in the Restore Act, which directs that the funds be spent on the “ecological and economic restoration” of the gulf.

BP already made a $1 billion down payment to states for early restoration projects, some of which was directed toward controversial projects like a hotel in Alabama. But for the most part, the money has been seen as critical to addressing longstanding environmental problems.

Much of the settlement money in Louisiana will go to environmental protection and restoration along the state’s ravaged and rapidly disappearing coast. The state has spent years developing a master plan for addressing environmental damage and the wetlands loss that long preceded the BP spill. The $50 billion plan, with some projects already underway or completed, calls for extensive levee construction and for beefing up barrier islands and restoring portions of the state’s vanishing wetlands in order to provide a greater degree of natural protection from hurricanes.

This proposed agreement would end federal and state involvement in a three-phase trial that began more than two years ago in one of the most complex and closely watched civil cases in United States history. Over the course of the trial, which took place in New Orleans, the Justice Department argued that the company should pay the maximum federal penalty of $13.7 billion, or $4,300 for every barrel spilled, under the Clean Water Act in cases of gross negligence.

On Thursday, BP set the ultimate cost associated with the spill at nearly $54 billion, though there are still some unknowable expenses to come. While the settlement clears away most of the liability exposure that BP faces, it does not eliminate some shareholder claims or private claims from thousands of individuals and businesses whose efforts in court will continue. BP has settled hundreds of thousands of such claims since the spill.