After living 38 years in the same house near 18th and Kentucky streets, the Rev. William Dulin thought he had it all when he bought a home last year in a new area along North Michigan Street.

“We looked at other houses, but we were trying to find something we could afford, and we didn’t want it too far from our church and we didn’t want it too far from where I work,” said Dulin, who works at Astaris and is pastor of Calvary Church of God and Christ. “It was the ideal location.”

Then Westar Energy, which burns coal at its massive power plant nearby, secured permission from Douglas County commissioners to start dumping piles of ash and slurry on an open field out back.

Talk about a shock.

“They said it was a ‘buffer zone,’ that nothing would probably be built over there,” Dulin said last week, recalling his conversations last year with Realtors. “I knew Westar owned it. I didn’t know they were going to put a landfill over there.

“If I had known they were going to put a landfill right behind my house, I probably wouldn’t have bought it.”

Dulin doesn’t blame Realtors, Westar, himself or anyone else for the predicament he now finds himself in. Although it would have “been nice if the real estate people had a little broader knowledge of what’s going to be around your property,” he said. “But I don’t know how you’re going to do that. Not everybody knows what’s going to happen.”

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The house is still wonderful, Dulin said – even if the Cottonwood trees out back still shed their seeds into his swimming pool.

“I’m happy about it. I just wish there wasn’t a landfill behind me,” he said. “But at my age, and my financial condition, I can’t afford to go out and buy another one.

“I guess I’m just stuck.”