During my recent back bay fishing trip I noticed a couple of environmental concerning sights. I was casting from one of my favorite striper spots when I heard water running, it turned out to be a broken sewer pipe on a Hurricane damaged house. In a different location, I noticed something white up on the marsh, it turned out to be 15′ feet of broken sewer pipe. I also found paint cans and all kinds of trash up on the mud flats. Here in Cape May county, NJ we have never had any industrial pollution, due to the fact that industry (factories) have never built here. Unlike the northern part of our State , were pollutants from the industrial revolution still remain in the mud. Matter of fact, the Passaic river in Northern New Jersey remains the most polluted river on the planet . In the realm of pollution, a few broken sewer pipes or even offline water treatment planets are not that bad . Cape May County has State of the art sewer treatment plants. Prior to hurricane Sandy the back bay waters here were the cleanest and clearest on the east coast of the United States. At this point, nobody knows if there was enough spilled sewage to effect the classification of the locale shellfish beds. Testing has not been done yet to the shellfish waters in Cape May County,NJ, also who knows how long it would take for the shellfish to purge naturally, if they were compromised. The DEP was proactive in closing shellfish harvesting State wide prior to Hurricane Sandy. Hopefully the NJDEP has the resources to test the shellfish waters, so they can be reopened to harvesting as soon as possible. The economic impact is mounting. FEMMA has not helped any commercial fisherman effected by Hurricane Sandy, that I am aware of.
UpDate, The New Jersey DEP is on time, check it out:
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Ken's Dock 
The St. Mary’s River takes an extra beating in events such as Sandy since this watershed is home to the county’s commercial district — an area with lots of parking lots, rooftops and roadways. Runoff is vigilantly collected by curbs, gutters and storm sewers sending it ever faster, and in greater quantities, into the St. Mary’s River. We can do better. With industry-known practices, one-third of this rainfall could have been infiltrated into the ground, thus resupplying our water table, which just happens to be low due to the dry weather over the past several months and remains low even after Sandy. Much of the bulge and erosion in streams could have been avoided.