Glenside residents protest DOGE cuts in the aftermath of SPS fire: ‘Who’s going to be keeping an eye out for us?’

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Residents gathered Tuesday night in Glenside, just a mile away from the aerospace parts manufacturing facility that was recently engulfed in a four-alarm fire, to protest ongoing federal funding and job cuts that could make industrial disasters more common in the coming years.

Some held signs with slogans including “Tax the rich,” criticizing Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.

“We don’t know what’s in the soil, we don’t know what’s in the water,” Jessica Tkacs, rally organizer and Glenside resident, told WHYY News. “We don’t know what it’s going to be like as they continue the rebuilding and cleaning out effort of SPS, but we know that we need to have our people on the ground monitoring things, people who are not working for anyone but taxpayers.”

Tkacs said environmental oversight is crucial. She said the community has relied on state and federal agencies to monitor the environmental impacts of the SPS Technologies fire. She told attendees she and her family left their home before the evacuation notice was issued.

“I had a headache. My children had headaches, and my throat was on fire,” she said. “One of my toughest neighbors had just started to vomit spontaneously. Other neighbors reported that they woke up in the middle of the night to flush their eyes with water because they were burning so badly.”

She praised the first responders and firefighters who protected the community, and pointed to “another set of heroes,” the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Protection, which she said are now endangered by ongoing federal budget and workforce cuts.

“If our EPA and DEP employees disappear, who’s going to be keeping an eye out for us? Who’s going to be watching the water and the soil as we clean up SPS?” she said.

SPS fire ‘the tip of the iceberg’ if federal cuts continue, advocates say

The investigation into the cause of the SPS fire is ongoing. In 2023, the EPA issued a $109,000 fine and cited the company for several violations for failure to properly store, close and label hazardous materials.

Alex Bomstein, executive director of Clean Air Council, a Philadelphia-based environmental nonprofit, said decreased federal regulation would “unquestionably” lead to more disasters.

“The reason that gaps like this appear is because of the long-standing attack on our agencies and the defunding of our agencies,” he said. “What we need is a government that’s focus is on supporting the people and protecting the people. We’ve had a lot of historical disinvestment in that, but this is an entirely different magnitude, an entirely different nature, of assault on our government and the folks who work day in and day out to protect us.”

For Elizabeth Malone, who came to the protest with her 3-year-old granddaughter, DOGE’s federal cuts have a direct tie to local concerns related to the SPS fire and beyond.

Her grandfather worked at SPS Technologies, and her family has lived in the area for five generations. She said the company was important to the local economy, but strong regulation enforcement is needed to ensure that if it is rebuilt, the facility does not pose a risk to nearby residents. She said she was there because she was worried about her granddaughter’s future.

“The lack of funding for inspections and follow up is the problem that SPS was having,” she said. “In terms of the future, this is a major economic blow to this area — 500 jobs we need. We need this kind of industry. This was the place where a lot of blue collar people worked for generations, and we need that kind of work. It’s highly skilled … it’s actual production. So the future has to be better regulated, and right now we’re in a real crisis of that.”

Speakers urged attendees to get involved locally and speak out against DOGE cuts by calling their representatives in Congress.

“I think people need to think about this disaster that just occurred as the tip of the iceberg in the way that the plane crashes and other aviation problems that we’ve seen in the first few weeks of the Trump administration have been an inkling of the type of thing we’re going to experience,” Bomstein said.

“We need to be reaching out to our Congress people, telling them that this dismantlement of our government is unacceptable,” Bomstein added, “and we need to be organizing as a people to show up and show that we are strong, stronger than Elon Musk and his cronies.”