KANSAS CITY, Mo. — On a rainy day around Kansas City, most people reach for an umbrella. But those who live and work in an unincorporated area of Jackson County that some call Dogpatch brace themselves for much worse.

Roads become undrivable as pools of water rise.

At the intersection of East 23rd Street Trafficway and Television Place in Blue Summit — also known as Dogpatch, right on Kansas City’s border and west of Independence — stormwater gathers in heavy rain, blocking access to several local businesses.

A storm has come to mean that owner Khurram “JJ” Jawed has to shut down the Fisca gas station for several days to wait out the floods and clean up the inevitable destruction.

“If this keeps happening, we’re gonna lose the business,” Jawed told The Star this week.

The problem facing Jawed and other nearby businesses is that the flooded area arguably falls in multiple jurisdictions — parts of it technically in Kansas City, and other parts in unincorporated Jackson County, with the highways under the jurisdiction of the Missouri Department of Transportation — leaving it unclear which agency is responsible for addressing the issue.

Blue Summit is uniquely served by a patchwork of area agencies since it falls in between two cities. Water from surrounding jurisdictions passes through the area because it doesn’t have any storm drainage systems, said Tracie Rice, chairperson of the Blue Summit Association in an email.

“It’s kind of an area that has gone unnoticed and ungoverned for a while, and that’s the challenge with unincorporated, unfortunately,” said Jackson County Legislator Manny Abarca.

Being on the edge of the city, the businesses surrounding this intersection have looked to both Kansas City and Jackson County in hopes of solving the ongoing problem.

Officials from each have told residents that the area is not their responsibility.

“Playing the blame game needs to stop and action really needs to be taken to get this fixed and under control,” Rice told The Star.

Local businesses in limbo

An April storm was particularly jarring with 3.5 inches of rain, as reported by KSHB. Jawed spent two weeks clearing out the drenched merchandise, and even more time fixing his gas pumps.

Then another storm hit.

“Somebody needs to take responsibility from there and fix that, that’s all I want,” Jawed said.

He has owned the gas station for 15 years and said it has existed for over a century. But with no insurance and no way to make up for the lost business, he’s uncertain of the historic gas station’s future.

Nearby, Will Rieke and his family own and operate CaveX KC and Kansas City Cold Storage, cold storage facilities that rely on the intersection for access. With over a dozen trucks passing in and out of the warehouse every day, he said the flooding heavily harms his business too.

Rieke calculated a loss of $150,000 on April 27 because of the floods.

“If the water’s too high, our workers can’t get in here, our truckers are too afraid to come in because they don’t know how high the water is,” Rieke said.

The company had to turn trucks away as they waited for the water to clear out. MoDOT blocked off parts of the intersection and a stretch of 23rd Street heading west, so trucks couldn’t exit to the nearby highway until the street opened Tuesday afternoon.

“It really disrupts the whole supply chain,” he said. “We also have about 300 tenants that store their boats, their cars, and then run their shops out of here.”

When the area floods, employees of nearby Pallet Rack KC have to climb down an overlooking hill from 23rd Trafficway, said Anthony Chavez, the manager.

“We shouldn’t be doing that, especially when we’re paying taxes to utilize our roads, and this is just not right,” he said. “It’s been four or five years, and it’s always the same story.”

Passing the blame

After that April storm, Rieke sent a letter to over a dozen area officials across both the city and the county to “demand immediate infrastructure intervention.” He explained the flooding caused drastic economic consequences, and also referenced the upcoming World Cup, which will hold six of its matches three miles away.

“The world is watching how we manage our infrastructure, and failing our local businesses on the border of our city during heavy rains is not the image we should want to project,” he wrote in the letter.

Kansas City and Jackson County officials told the Star that MoDOT has jurisdiction over the area prone to severe flooding.

It is not something that Jackson County can fix, said Interim County Executive Phil LeVota in an email, emphasizing that the most affected area falls within city limits.

The city insists that responsibility falls to the state. KC Water does not plan to do any work on the situation, said Jackson Overstreet, a public information officer for the city. It would be up to property owners to address the damages, he said.

So far, the state’s transportation agency has responded with temporary fixes, area business owners said. MoDOT officials wrote in an email that they placed the traffic control and monitored the area, and will “pursue solutions with the adjacent property owners.”

Chavez said that temporarily closing the roads is all the state has done in response to the flooding.

“That’s all they’ve been doing, just putting up barricades,” said Chavez. “They’re not coming up with a permanent solution.”

The agency’s investigation into the drainage infrastructure in the area is ongoing, said Brooke Rohlfing, communications manager for MoDOT, in an email.

The local business owners say they have only heard back from one official: Jackson County Legislator Abarca, who announced his bid for County Executive last month.

Abarca traveled to the area two weeks ago to speak to locals and better understand the situation. He also told The Star he’s discussed the situation with city and state officials.

“I’m trying to unpack exactly what’s broken, how to fix it, who needs to be involved, what’s kind of the goal, and then truly just understanding the impact of what a flood over there means,” said Abarca.

He said a solution will require more coordination among area entities.

Business owners told reporters they believe construction on a neighboring property, covering a marsh area, in recent years caused gravel to block already small pipes, worsening the flooding.

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