The others immediately understood what Agent meant. From the earlier memories, they knew that the circus had already begun to decline when Old Bohr was young. At that time, he could not have been older than his thirties, still in the prime of his life.
What they already knew was that after the town's tourism industry declined, the city government began shifting pollution, directly connecting factory drainage systems to Big Valley Town's underground water system.
Putting those two facts together meant that the water system had already begun to be polluted when Old Bohr was young, rather than only after his death.
Agent even suspected that they had started secretly discharging waste while the town was still at its peak, because industry had already been developing rapidly by then. Politicians would not care whether the townsfolk and tourists lived or died. They had only been relatively restrained because there were too many visitors around, and they feared being exposed.
And what Bingge meant by "they only started discharging after the decline" was really that once the town declined, they stopped pretending—fewer people came, so they could dump it openly. Who would dare say anything?
Moreover, given the era's background, circuses were exactly the sort of thing most strongly opposed by left-wing activists at the time. Human rights and animal protection in those days had some real substance behind them. A circus as famous as Big Valley Town's would certainly have been a prime target for them.
Those people also carried considerable political weight. The politicians of Xivi City might have held back somewhat because they did not want to be discovered by them. Then, after the circus had been crushed and those people stopped coming, combined with the changing tide of the world, they began acting without restraint.
As the