Brush Creek is an appealing feature of the Country Club Plaza, where the lawns are manicured and sidewalks are wide. But once the creek crosses east of Troost Avenue, it’s a different story.
“I walk along there and I see so much debris in the water that you think it's a small island,” said Kansas City resident Jackie Brown. “But no, that's mountains and mountains of dirt and trash, and that just breaks my heart.”
On Thursday afternoon, Brown and other community members, faith leaders and environmental activists walked along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, from MLK Park to Troost Avenue, to demand that the city make improvements to the eastern portion of Brush Creek. The social justice organization Metropolitan Organization for Racial and Economic Equality, or MORE2, and faith leaders organized the march.
The disparity in quality between the area around the upscale Country Club Plaza and around Kansas City’s working class, Black neighborhoods, is stark.
Closer to the Plaza, sidewalks near the creek are wider. Bridges offer an easy route for pedestrians to cross from one side to the other. The vegetation and grass around the creek is well-kept.
But on Brush Creek’s eastern side, or lower Brush Creek, trash often floats on the water. There are fewer sidewalks and walking paths, and the ones that do exist are narrow. Dirt, grime and vegetation often crowd these walkways after flooding, like in the aftermath of this week’s heavy rains and thunderstorms. Sometimes dead fish float at the surface.
For Brown, that disparity is a sign of environmental injustice and environmental racism.
“For years, I walked around Brush Creek and I see things that are going on here, and it just does something to your spirit,” she said.
Brush Creek has stymied city leaders for decades. Plans to improve Brush Creek have stalled for years.
Kansas City and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers held community meetings in 2023 as part of renewed efforts to revitalize Brush Creek. The resulting master plan focuses on the area of Brush Creek from The Paseo to the Blue River. Its recommendations include expanding MLK Park, adding a skate park and building more pedestrian bridges, a public art plaza and more gathering spaces.
The city has not formally adopted the Brush Creek Master Plan. It’s unclear how much the other projects and recommended improvements will cost. Last year, the city received $2.8 million in federal money to build one of those pedestrian bridges to cross Brush Creek near MLK Park.
Longtime residents who await improvements to the long-neglected eastern portion of Brush Creek hope to see more changes soon.
Kansas City pastor Michael Brooks remembers when the creek flooded in October 1998 and killed 11 people, including 8 deaths when water inundated the Prospect Road bridge. He thought the flooding would galvanize local officials to make changes.
“We're dealing with the same problem,” Brooks said. “Our leaders need to know that they need to invest east of Troost just as much as they invest west of Troost.”
Brooks addressed the crowd in a shaded area near the corner of MLK Boulevard and Troost Avenue — the point at which Brush Creek visibly improves to the west.
“If we had kept walking, you would have seen, visibly, the difference between where we walk from and where you're walking to,” Brooks said.
Brooks said it’s embarrassing to walk along Brush Creek and see how dirty and disadvantaged the area has become. He pointed out that those problems coincide with ongoing issues in neighborhoods east of Troost, like violence and illegal dumping.
“The World Cup is coming, and east of Troost is still going to be here,” Brooks said, addressing city officials. “And long after (visitors are) gone, east of Troost is still going to be here. So spend the money where it's worth it, because we are worth it, and it's time you spend the money in the right place.”
Several people at Thursday’s march identified the problems with lower Brush Creek as an issue of environmental racism, where neglect from city officials has downstream, negative effects on Kansas City’s Black neighborhoods east of Troost Avenue.
“It's very obvious to me that this design problem is baked into every facet of how we do this city,” said Craig Smith, who published a YouTube video criticizing the state of Brush Creek 10 years ago. “How am I going to teach my sons how to use a city that's designed for them to fail?”
