Sloan Gives Up Fight Against Federal Project Agrees To Turn Over Land Needed For Water Line
Stan Sloan has given in to the federal government.
The Post Falls man agreed last week to turn over to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services a small strip of property he owns in the Spokane Valley.
The department wants to run a water line across the land to an alcohol and drug treatment facility it is building near Eighth Avenue and Carnahan Road.
After it is completed in the next few weeks, the center will be home to 32 Native American juveniles trying to beat addictions.
Sloan doesn’t want the treatment center and loudly protested against it for the past several years.
He claimed it would hurt the value of the modest homes surrounding it, some of which Sloan built himself.
His rhetoric increased in volume and frequency last year when government officials asked for an easement for the water line.
Sloan said no and last summer vowed to violently defend the land against government encroachment.
He made references to Ruby Ridge, Idaho, where a deputy U.S. marshal and the son and wife of white separatist Randy Weaver were killed in a 1992 standoff.
Sloan even parked his bulldozer nearby and threatened to run over anyone who trespassed on the parcel.
“I’ll either kill them, or they’ll kill me,” Sloan said last June. “And I ain’t bluffing.”
On Jan. 2, he quietly gave up the fight.
Sloan signed an agreement that requires him to turn over the land immediately and states he “will not interfere with the plaintiff’s possession and use of subject property.”
Federal Judge W. Fremming Nielsen approved that agreement Tuesday.
Sloan is still negotiating a price for the land.
Deputy U.S. Attorney Pamela De Rusha said Wednesday she expects an agreement in two weeks or so.
It’s unlikely Sloan will get anywhere near the $500,000 he demanded in August for the 30-foot strip and nearly four other acres he owns nearby.
An appraiser hired by the government last year put a $100 value on the strip of land Sloan agreed to turn over.
Attempts to reach Sloan for comment were unsuccessful.
, DataTimes