RFK Stadium, next to the Anacostia River, is surrounded by parking lots. Runoff from these impervious surfaces pollutes the river.

Jacob Fenston / WAMU

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced this week that he had made a tentative deal with the Trump Administration to secure land for a possible new stadium on the bluffs above the Potomac River, just south of D.C.

“Can you imagine the [Washington football team’s] stadium on ‘Monday Night Football,’ looking at all the monuments reflecting in the Potomac River?” Hogan said while speaking to reporters. “It would be the nicest facility in America.”

But while it might make for a nice view, some environmentalists question this use of what is currently a national park, the historic Oxon Hill Farm and Oxon Cove Park.

“Our concern is the river,” says Dean Naujoks, of Potomac Riverkeeper. “This would be sited right on the river, in an area that’s national parkland that has a lot of sensitive wetlands.”

Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Hill Farm make up a 300-acre wedge of preserved green space. The area lies right next to the glitz and glamor of National Harbor and the sluggish traffic of the Capitol Beltway at its spaghetti-tangled interchange with I-295. It’s a little island of green surrounded by development.

A stadium could mean more roads and parking lots—more paved, impervious surfaces sending polluted runoff into the river. It could also mean more traffic and air pollution, with few public transit options nearby.

The deal, as outlined by Hogan, would involve swapping state-owned land in western Maryland for the federally owned Oxon Hill property. Hogan did not specify what western Maryland property would be traded, but he said the National Park Service was eyeing it for part of a Civil War battlefield park.

It’s far from a done deal. Team owner Dan Snyder still seems to be shopping around. He has been talking to officials in Virginia and D.C., where Mayor Muriel Bowser has been working with Republicans on Capitol Hill to extend the city’s lease on the RFK Stadium site, which would serve as another option for a new future stadium. That site is also owned by the National Park Service, and also perched right next to a river: the Anacostia.

“What I’m most objecting to is how this is being decided,” says Jim Foster, president of the Anacostia Watershed Society. “It’s really happening in back doors up on Capitol Hill. It’s the football team’s owner really working his connections. The community has had no input on this.”

The original stadium, which opened in 1961, was built before modern environmental laws.

“There was no stormwater management. There was no impact study,” says Foster. If a new stadium were built in the same spot, there would be tighter controls, but Foster still questions the proposal.

“Is this the appropriate and highest and best use for this land that, by the way, belongs to all of us?”

The team’s current contract to play at Fedex Field in Landover expires in 2027.

This story was originally published on WAMU.

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