I wish the reporter had dug into a few more things: first, the impact on the neighbor. Did they just not like the look of it, or was there more? Second, what options he had to mitigate this. Was it the grass that was the problem, and could that have been mitigated by putting down some sort of fluid catching surface, could that have helped?

My instinct is to support the old man who fixes things, but I'm cautious in coming to conclusions. He might have been doing real harm to his neighbor, or to the environment. He may have had reasonable outs and been stubborn and not taken them. We don't know enough, and I think that's a failure in journalism.