The floods from Hurricane Matthew are finally receding, but the battle over manure leaked from hog farms is just getting started.

"You gonna believe me, or your lyin' eyes?" Versions of that joke have been cracked by comedians from Chico Marx to Richard Pryor; and it has gained a new relevance in North Carolina's hurricane-ravaged, hog-dense eastern counties.

Late last week, while rivers were still flooding from Hurricane Matthew's deluge, a watchdog group called the Waterkeeper Alliance published aerial photos of hog farms depicting a grim scene—massive cesspools, known by the industry as lagoons, leaking into floodwater or just completely subsumed. See my piece, and several of the photos, here.

But according to the North Carolina Pork Council (NPPC), pollution has been minimal. "There have been no reported hog lagoon breaches," the industry group claims in an October 14 release. "There are 11 hog farms where floodwaters have inundated lagoons, but the majority of the wastewater will remain in the lagoons as flood waters recede." The group estimates "fewer than 3,000 swine deaths" from the floods.

The NC Department of Environmental Quality gave me a similar report Monday afternoon. "We did an aerial tour over the weekend, and were heartened by what we saw in terms of not having the kind of catastrophic damage we had in 1999 from Hurricane Floyd," spokeswoman Stephanie Hawco said. That time, leakage from farms contributed to a 350-square-mile dead zone in coastal estuaries. (It should be noted that the NC DEQ is currently under investigation by the US Environmental Protection Agency for not protecting the civil rights of the largely African American communities who live within smelling distance if North Carolina's factory-scale hog farms.)