Saint Anthony Falls Lab, Where Water Meets the Future

From The Line:

When I was a kid I loved to go down to the local park after a heavy rain. Water running down to the river in the channels alongside a dirt path could be dammed up with mud--for a few minutes. But water is relentless and eventually it will find a way to squirt through and completely destroy your work. It was wonderful, dirty entertainment for an eight-year-old. After a summer thunderstorm, I could get in a good couple of hours of hydro-engineering.  

I had no idea there were grown-up people with jobs like that.  

Some of them work out in the channel of the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis, in a boxcar-shaped building perched on the edge of St. Anthony Falls. They build river deltas, demolish dams, dig channels, and restore wetlands. And their next job is to help shape the future of renewable energy.

The building is the University of Minnesota's St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, and Fotis Sotiropolous is its director. 

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