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A Scottsdale developer and his companies have agreed to pay another $1 million in connection with his role in bulldozing, filling and diverting about five miles of the Santa Cruz River in Pinal County.

The deal, announced Tuesday, settles a lawsuit filed against George H. Johnson after his firms bladed about 2,000 acres in of privately owned land in 2003 to create what was to be La Osa Ranch, a community north of Marana. The work, according to the lawsuit, severely damaged what had been an area with rich vegetation, including one of the few extensive mesquite forests remaining in Arizona's Sonoran Desert region.

Johnson, along with Johnson International Inc. and General Hunt Properties Inc., will pay $1 million. Ronald Tenpas, an assistant U.S. attorney, called the penalty "virtually unprecedented" for this type of case.

But it's small compared with the $7 million Johnson and his companies agreed to pay the state last year in connection with the same incident.

Another $250,000 is being paid to the federal government by 3-F Contracting, the private firm Johnson hired to do the work.

None of the defendants admitted to any liability. Johnson's attorney did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

According to the federal complaint, the bulldozed property lies within the largest active flood plain of the lower Santa Cruz River that meanders through the property in natural braids rather than in a single channel.

That, according to the government's claim, made it a natural place for vegetation and a "critical corridor" for wildlife, not only along the river and Los Robles Wash, but from Picacho Peak State Park to the Ironwood Forest National Monument.

Johnson never developed the property, and he sold it in 2004.

Technically, the two penalties are being levied under a section of the Clean Water Act, which requires a permit to fill federally protected waterways. Tenpas said the $1.25 million in combined penalties under that law is the largest in the history of the Pacific Southwest Region of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and one of the largest in the history of the entire agency.

The deal, which is subject to final approval by U.S. District Judge Mary Murguia, requires the penalties to be paid within 30 days of her signature.

The state's lawsuit, settled last year, said that aside from the 2,000 acres of private land, Johnson had another 270 acres of state trust land bladed near the Ironwood National Monument. Overall, more than 40,000 protected native plants were killed, the state claimed.