LIHU'E, Kaua'i — Attorneys for Jimmy Pflueger have responded angrily to the Environmental Protection Agency and state Department of Health's announcement they will assess $135,000 in penalties against Pflueger for failing to launch the second phase of restoration after landslides at his property in Pila'a.

Attorney Wesley H.H. Ching on Tuesday said Pflueger stands ready to start work, and the only reason he hasn't is that the county has failed after 10 months to issue a grading permit for the work.

"Mr. Pflueger is in a nightmarish Catch-22 — commence remediation work without a county grading permit and face fines and penalties, or incur increasing daily stipulated penalties waiting for the county to issue a grading permit," he said in a prepared statement. Pflueger is "ready, willing and able" to start work as soon as a permit is issued, Ching said.

EPA spokesman Dean Higuchi said that Pflueger never informed the EPA about permit delays until after the deadlines for starting the work had passed.

"He missed the deadlines that were set within the (court-approved) settlement order. If he had kept in touch with us, we might have been able to adjust the timetables," Higuchi said.

Higuchi said there was no evidence Pflueger was dragging his feet on getting the permits — just that the county was not processing them quickly.

Ching said the latest fine, on top of a $23,500 fine last week, "smacks of a witch hunt."

In last week's case, Pflueger was fined for missing deadlines to replace cesspools in the Kalihiwai area as a "supplemental environmental project" called for in the settlement order. Pflueger had agreed to pay a fine $221,000 in place of competing the project.

Both sides agree that Pflueger has already paid fines of $2 million to the state, and has agreed to spend $5.3 million in restoration work. It is the largest federal Clean Water Act penalty in the nation against a person.

The penalties involve grading work done without permits on Pflueger's North Kaua'i land, which resulted during a storm in large quantities of muddy water running into Pila'a Bay.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.