On this day in 1978, President Jimmy Carter declared a federal emergency at Love Canal. Some may not remember this dark period in American history.

A company called Hooker Chemical (now Occidental Petroleum) buried 22,000 tons of toxic waste in the 1940s. The property was sold (with a warning) in the 1950s and later developed.

The end result was a high level of miscarriages, cancer, nervous disorders, and birth defects heavily impacting people in the area.

The dumping, of course, took place long before the EPA and all those onerous regulations the GOP likes to complain about. But the company made money and didn’t have to figure out how to protect people from the chemicals. There was no EPA to ruin things.

This site led to the development of the Superfund and the need for American taxpayers to pay to clean up toxic waste sites that were a hazard to the public.

This is the world the Republicans would like to return us to. This is the type of corporation the Republicans love and court in their quest to destroy the planet and put all the wealth into the hands of just a few.