In Another Giveaway to the Commander’s Billionaire Owner, the D.C. Council Is Set To Waive $1 Million in Fines to Chop Down Irreplaceable Heritage Trees
Trees that measure 100 inches or more in trunk circumference are illegal to cut down in the District, and fines for removal start at $30,000. The Commanders could take out 31 of them.
This story is part of Hola Cultura’s investigative series “The Shade Gap.” The series is supported with funds from SpotlightDC with reporting by participants in Hola Cultura’s Storytelling Program for Experiential Learning and co published with the Washington City Paper. The story was written by Francisco Rodriguez and was edited by Christine MacDonald, Hola Cultura’s executive director and editor.
Escucha la entrevista de María Esther Cáceres en radio El Zol con nuestro reportero Francisco Rodriguez.
Dozens of immense willow oaks, red oaks, and lindens tower around the gargantuan husk of the long-defunct Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Northeast. The District Department of Transportation calls them “heritage trees,” large, mature trees that are illegal to cut down under D.C. law due to their irreplaceable environmental benefits.
But the D.C. Council, with Mayor Muriel Bowser’s blessing, just paved the way for razing an estimated 31 heritage trees around the stadium grounds—waving sizable illegal tree removal fines in the process. The exemption will amount to an estimated $1 million giveaway to the team’s billionaire majority owner, Josh Harris—that’s in addition to the approximately $1 billion D.C. taxpayers will supply over the next decade to overhaul the storied sports palace. (City Paper owner Mark Ein is part of the team’s ownership group.)
The proposed exemption to the Tree Canopy Protection Amendment Act of 2016 has alarmed environmentalists who say it would represent an unprecedented erosion of the District’s nation-leading tree protection laws.
“Unfortunately, now it seems like a trend,” says Kelly Collins Choi, director of policy and land conservation at Casey Trees, the nonprofit that plants and protects trees in the District. “It opens the door for additional exemptions that may undermine the intent and the strength of the heritage tree law.”
The RFK Stadium redevelopment plan is expected to pass its final reading next month, an with it, the Council is on the verge of granting its third-ever exemption to the law intended to protect the city’s tree canopy. The exemption potentially opens the floodgates for the removal of more heritage trees that are in the way of development around the city, according to activists who are pushing to remove the exemptions before the bill’s final reading on Sept. 17. On Monday evening, Aug. 25, Casey Trees released a petition to rescind the city’s proposed exemptions before the bill passes.
All three exemptions come at a time when environmental activists are fuming over significant cuts to the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment from the fiscal year 2026 budget. For some, the exemptions and discounted permit fees are like salt on those wounds.
“These very large trees, they’ve earned a space in our neighborhoods,” says Chris Weiss, executive director of the DC Environmental Network, who adds that the bill sends the message that the trees and the benefits they provide local residents are “not as important as transferring wealth from low and moderate income District residents to billionaires.”
Talk of a stadium redevelopment plan to bring the Washington Commanders back to the District finally crystallized this summer. On Aug. 1, the Council voted 9-3 to give initial approval to B26-288, the “Robert F. Kennedy Campus Redevelopment Act of 2025,” a $3.7 billion, five-year plan to revitalize the RFK Memorial Stadium campus with a new stadium, parking, housing, retail, and restaurants. The Commanders have pledged to spend $2.7 billion on the project, reportedly the largest private investment in the history of the District, with the D.C. government contributing more than $1 billion in public investment. The Commanders did not respond to City Paper’s request for comment.
For locals like Lora Nunn, a 13-year resident of nearby Kingman Park, the bill rebuffs community members.
“It’s frustrating, especially for those of us who worked in the community for a long time and who testified to get some of those things in place,” says Nunn, who is a member of the Kingman Park RFK Future Task Force, a group that aims to give residents near the site a voice in the stadium redevelopment. “I remember being on hours worth of hearings … and then just to have the city look the other way and kind of be dismissive of things that the community has said they value is really frustrating.”
Although RFK Stadium closed in 2019, the trees around it continue to benefit residents who live in nearby neighborhoods, including Ward 7’s Kingman Park, which has less tree cover and endures some of the highest temperatures in the city during summer months. The trees around the stadium provide some shade and an important layer of protection against flooding and erosion, two other major hazards in the stadium’s vicinity.
Nunn says Kingman Park residents also depend on the green space along Oklahoma Avenue NE, on the stadium’s campus, for birthday parties, sports, and other outdoor activities.
Tucked within the redevelopment plan, though, is what would be one of the largest permitted tree removal projects the city has seen at least since the beginning of 2020, according to records available in DDOT’s Urban Forestry Division’s tree permit database. In all, the bill would grant the Commanders permission to remove upward of a combined 150 heritage and “special trees,” those that are smaller than heritage trees but still contribute to the city’s urban forest. While it’s illegal to remove healthy heritage trees absent special permission from the mayor, special trees can be removed for a fee of $55 per inch of circumference.
Large, mature trees play a crucial role in reducing erosion, flooding, and heat islands across the city, according to the DOEE. With the removal of so many heritage and special trees, Charles Boston, an arborist certified by the International Society of Arboriculture who has run a tree services company in the District for nearly two decades, expects that flooding will worsen in nearby neighborhoods like Kingman Park.
“It can have a huge impact on flooding and increase that, because it’s not just the roots that absorb water,” Boston says. “It’s leaves, it’s branches, it’s bark. … So when you take that element away, that creates more runoff; that water has to go somewhere.”
If enacted in its current form, the bill will give the Commanders a pass on complying with the Urban Forest Preservation Act of 2002, a law that forbids any “person or entity, including the District government, without a Heritage Tree removal permit issued by the Mayor, to top, cut down, remove, girdle, break, or destroy any Heritage Tree.” The law and others are integral to the city’s initiative to protect and expand its tree canopy to cover 40 percent of the city by 2032, which activists and experts agree is key to the health and quality of life of District residents as climate change brings more extreme heat, extreme storms, and flooding. The recent exemptions jeopardize the District’s canopy goals, Collins Choi says.
The law defines any tree with a circumference of 100 inches or more as a heritage tree. The Urban Forest Preservation Act of 2002 states that a violation of the permit rule includes a fine of no less than $30,000, or $300 for each inch of trunk circumference for each heritage tree removed. As part of the waiver, the Commanders will pay a much lower rate for each heritage tree they axe: $55 per inch of circumference. The significant discount deals a blow to the city’s tree fund that pays for planting new trees, says Vincent Drader, Casey Trees’ communications director.
“It can take more than 50 years for a newly planted tree to grow to maturity,” Drader says. “The new RFK Stadium may open its doors in 2030, but if these heritage trees are removed, our canopy for this site won’t be complete or whole again until at least 2075—and that’s assuming new trees are planted.”
The Council’s Committee on Business and Economic Development, chaired by At-Large Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, held a markup to consider the bill and orchestrated public hearings last month. While many gladly welcomed the return of their beloved football team to the District, some local residents expressed concern over the potential effects of removing large amounts of greenery.
Nisha Patruni, of the Kingman Park RFK Future Task Force, said the stadium could put some community members at risk.
“When neighborhoods have more buildings, sidewalks, vehicles, and roadways, they absorb heat rather than reflect it, leading to temperatures that can rise up to 10 degrees higher than other areas with more tree coverage,” Patruni said during the first hearing. “Our children and elderly neighbors are already at increased risk and you are now advocating to replace green space with parking.”
Prior to the initial hearing on the stadium redevelopment plan, the Washington Commanders spent at least $37,500 to hire Brett Greene, president and CEO of American Management Corporation, to lobby the Council on “matters related to RFK Development,” according to public records from the District’s Board of Ethics and Government Accountability.
These records show that Greene communicated with nearly every councilmember at an in-person event on June 30. That was 10 days after Council Chair Phil Mendelson and McDuffie co-introduced the stadium redevelopment bill that passed Aug. 1.
Although developers have tried to circumvent the city’s heritage tree protections in the past, previous attempts had failed until this summer.
“The last exemption attempt we are aware of was back in 2019,” Collins Choi says.
According to ESPN, the Commanders were told they could proceed with their plans following the initial vote on Aug. 1, but there was at least some resistance among lawmakers ahead of the first vote. Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau, Ward 3 Councilmember Matthew Frumin, and At-Large Councilmember Robert White voted against the bill earlier this month (though none of them specifically mentioned the heritage trees among their objections); and Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen appears supportive of protecting at least some trees surrounding the stadium.
Allen’s deputy chief of staff, Erik Salmi, says that after Allen “uncovered” Bowser’s plan to exempt the Commanders from “all protections for heritage trees,” including “along the Anacostia River’s edge,” he added protections to the riverfront trees in the Anacostia Commons riparian area, and will continue working for more tree protection. It’s unclear how many trees are protected under Allen’s addition to the legislation.
“If the campus is going to be successful, it will need to provide shade and strengthen that connection between D.C. residents and the Anacostia River,” Salmi says. “Protecting those trees is a big part of that.”
The other recent heritage tree removal exemptions include a bill, introduced by Allen, that benefits the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority. The Long Bridge Project Emergency Amendment Act of 2025 allows VPRA to remove a single heritage tree on its development site. But in that case, the rail authority paid $1,200 per inch of the tree’s circumference, much more than the $300-per-inch fine the District typically charges for heritage tree removals.
The Council voted 11-1 to pass both bills on July 14, with only Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker voting “present” at each final hearing. The Parkside bill, in particular, is a significant victory for the developer, who spent years pushing to cut down those trees.
The Commanders’ plan, by contrast, will remove dozens of heritage trees. For Boston, their removal undermines the intent of the District’s preservation laws.
“Ward 7 has a lot of hazardous trees,” says Boston, adding that low-income homeowners are supposed to be able to tap city funding for hazardous or invasive tree removal, but are usually unable to access those funds. “Another reason why billion-dollar corporations should not be given a shortcut,” he says.
These exemptions come at a time when Bowser has been shifting away from environmental programs and protections in other areas. Bowser’s 2026 budget proposal slashed more than $70 million from DOEE’s budget—a 24 percent cut from the agency’s 2025 approved budget, according to WUSA9 (though the budget grew significantly last year). And the Washington Post listed the environment among the “losers” in the 2026 budget cycle. Even after the Council partially restored about $12 million to DOEE’s budget, the agency will still see a 20 percent reduction from 2025.
“Why do I have to keep, every other day, [learning] about the latest thing that this mayor or someone on the Council has done to weaken our existing laws that we spent the last 20 years putting in place?” says Weiss.
Nunn, who has been active for years in both Kingman Park community advocacy and environmental advocacy groups such as the Anacostia Watershed Society, fears the stadium deal will have disastrous repercussions on the Kingman Park community.
“The frustration is that the mayor and certain members of Council are touting [the stadium redevelopment plan] as this really great benefit to our community, but the benefit to our community is having a really well-funded Department of Energy and Environment,” Nunn says. “If we don’t see a real direct commitment to bolstering those holes that the city has created by deciding to use their funds to support this [stadium] project, then it’s going to have a devastating impact on our youth and our communities.”
View all the stories in “The Shade Gap” series.
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What is more important than waiving the fines is protecting the Heritage trees. They are not supposed to be cut down in the first place. We have opposed treating “heritage” trees like “special trees” with fines.sd