New York ? Honeywell Inc. will spend $451 million to help clean up Onondaga Lake, once a sacred American Indian waterway turned into a toxic stew by a century of municipal and industrial pollution.

The agreement announced Thursday is one of the largest legal settlements against a polluter in state history, said Gov. George Pataki and Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer.

Honeywell will commit to a nine-year cleanup plan that calls for dredging 2.65 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment from the five-mile-long lake on Syracuse’s northeastern limits, according to an order to be filed in U.S. District Court in Syracuse.

Additionally, Honeywell agreed to seal 579 acres of lake bottom with a cap of sand, gravel and other material.

Meanwhile, Onondaga County is spending $500 million on a 15-year project to stop polluting the lake with sewage by 2012. The county is under a federal court order to make the lake safe for swimming and fishing and comply with the federal Clean Water Act.