Feds Sue Sloan For Easement Across Property Government Wants To Run Water Line To Alcohol And Drug Treatment Facility Near Eighth And Carnahan

The federal government is tired of messing around with Stan Sloan.

For the past eight months, federal officials have tried to talk the Post Falls man into granting them an easement across a 30-foot wide strip of land he owns in the Valley.

Sloan has been intransigent.

Now, the government is suing him.

Lawyers in the Spokane office of the U.S. Attorney General filed suit against Sloan in U.S. District Court on Nov. 30 in an effort to have the land condemned.

A hearing before a judge is scheduled for Jan. 3.

The government wants the easement so it can run a water line to an alcohol and drug treatment facility it is building near Eighth and Carnahan.

The line is needed to provide necessary water pressure for the facility’s fire sprinkler system, according to government documents.

“The location is the least expensive possible option for the federal government; it is the shortest and easiest to construct of all possible options…,” the government states in the suit.

The center, which is scheduled to open early next year, will house 32 Native American youths trying to beat addictions.

An appraiser hired by the government determined this spring that the easement was worth $100, but federal officials have offered Sloan as much as $10,000 for it.

In the lawsuit, the price is back to $100.

Sloan has refused to consider anything less than nearly $500,000 for the strip of land and four other acres he owns nearby.

He has said the treatment facility is misplaced, hurting property values in the mostly residential neighborhood.

Sloan also contends that the government is “tapping the fruits of my labor” by hooking into the water line, which he installed several years ago when he developed the land to the north.

“I spent a fortune putting those lines in there, a fortune,” Sloan said this week. “Now the government is coming in there and stealing the utilities. What a sweet deal for them.”

Sloan, a Valley native, said he is still talking with government officials and hopes the matter can be settled out of court. He’s also hired an attorney.

But he’s backed off considerably from statements he made earlier this year, when he vowed to fight the government to the end and even threatened to run over government workers with a bulldozer.

“I don’t know what the hell I can do about it now,” Sloan said this week. “You tell me.”

, DataTimes