As the anniversary of Superstorm Sandy arrives there will be many stories looking back

So many of those stories will deal with the human element. How homes and towns are still fighting to recover, how people have have their lives turned upside down and are nowhere near back to normal.

But did you know for one major area Sandy turned out to be a great thing? It's true, something most of us never think about, the watershed for the Meadowlands. According to Bill Sheehan, of the environmental group Hackensack Riverkeeper, the storm helped the Meadowlands which in turn helps protect us for a possible next big storm:

It also swept away accumulations of dead marsh grasses and the kind of human debris that has made the Meadowlands notorious: tires, old oil drums and soda cans tossed from passing cars on the New Jersey Turnpike. In the months after the storm, Sheehan, who captains boat trips out on the Hackensack and its environs, noticed new growth of native cordgrass in places like Saw Mill Creek, where it had never been before.

"Thousands of square feet of former barren mudflats are showing signs of life," he said. Sheehan says even major storms are nothing new for a tidal marsh, and can have a "purging effect" on the landscape.

There is more, so much more to this article on how exactly the water table in the Meadowlands helps keep so many things in nature copacetic round these here parts. We'd encourage you to read the full article and give some thought to the whole region and how things work, not just cities and towns.