More than $95 million has been committed in Hawai'i in the past year to correcting environmental violations and preventing future pollution as a result of enforcement actions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Included are tens of millions of dollars going toward improvements and prevention measures associated with private construction activity on Kaua'i, storm-water mitigation measures by the state Department of Transportation, and replacing and closing hundreds of cesspools at public schools across the state.

Wayne Nastri, EPA western regional administrator, called the $7.5 million settlement with James Pflueger involving Clean Water Act violations on his property at Pila'a a significant precedent.

"The Pflueger case was the (nation's) largest Clean Water Act storm penalty at a single site owned by a single landowner," Nastri said.

The settlement included $2 million in penalties to the state and federal governments. The retired auto dealer will also spend about $5.3 million to prevent erosion and restore streams affected by construction.

William McCorriston, Pflue-ger's attorney, said the penalty "was sort of draconian."

What the EPA doesn't explain is why his client has been forced to pay "far greater than large corporations that dump toxic waste into rivers and streams and cause environmental damage far greater than what happened at Pila'a," McCorriston said.

Also this past year, an agreement with the state DOT requires that the agency pay a $1 million penalty and spend $60 million to address Clean Water Act violations at state highways and airports over the next five years. An additional $1.1 million will go toward developing environmental management systems for DOT facilities.

"Storm-water runoff is a high priority," Nastri said.

DOT spokesman Scott Ishikawa said one of the impacts of the agreement was that the department is now "streetsweeping" the urban Honolulu section of the H-1 Freeway much more frequently. "I don't think we had a consistent schedule before," he said.

State freeways and highways in rural areas, meanwhile, are also being cleaned more frequently than in the past — between four to six weeks, Ishikawa said.

Another consequence of the settlement was the purchase of a vacuum truck that came in handy when the department tackled the landslide outside the Pali Tunnel two weeks ago, he said.

Compliance agreements also were reached with the Department of Education requiring the agency to spend $22 million to replace and close over 320 large-capacity cesspools at 60 schools across the state.

DOE spokesman Greg Knudsen called the improvements "necessary and important to be able to prevent groundwater contamination and to protect the environment," he said.

Improvements have already begun and are expected to be completed before the September 2009 deadline that had been agreed upon, Knudsen said.

Reach Gordon Y.K. Pang at gpang@honoluluadvertiser.com and Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.