Water leak / I'm an idiot

I'll just state first that I'm an idiot and only discovered last night that we had a burst pipe that had probably been running wide open for at least 3 weeks. I also got our water bill from NJ American Water and it was ridiculous, as you'd expect. My question: Is there any chance of talking NJ American down on the overall bill, or can I at least hope for a payment plan? Anybody else ever been through a similar situation?

I had a similar situation with United watwr in jc, they did offer a payment plan

Yes, you can talk it down. We had a toilet leak and they forgave us the amount. But there's some limit on the number of times you can ask.