In ‘Silent Spring,’ Rachel Carson Described a Fictional, Bucolic Hamlet, Much Like Her Hometown. Now, There’s a Plastics Plant Under Construction 30 Miles Away

SPRINGDALE, Pa.—If you stand in the sloping yard of the Rachel Carson Homestead and look southwest, down toward the Allegheny River, you can see the towers of the Cheswick Generating Station. Through the bare trees and thick green bramble that surround the house, the smokestacks emerge in the distance...