![View of the Minnesota River near the I-35 bridge during high flows in summer 2016. Image by Carrie Jennings.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/DSCN2615-MN-River-e1706766750154.jpg?fit=330%2C248&ssl=1)
![View of the Minnesota River near the I-35 bridge during high flows in summer 2016. Image by Carrie Jennings.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/DSCN2615-MN-River-e1706766750154.jpg?fit=330%2C248&ssl=1)
![St. Anthony Falls Lock, closed in June 2015.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/IMG_8274.jpg?fit=330%2C248&ssl=1)
Introduction to Issue Four
For as long as people have been living with rivers, we have been changing them. Put up a levee to keep water away from where we don’t want it. Build a canal to move water to where we do want it. Put up a dam to stop floods or generate water power. Over millennia, the possibilities have been endless.
![Morning mist at St. Anthony Falls. Image courtesy of Mona M. Smith and Joanne Richardson.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/morning-mist-SAF-lg_bw.jpg?fit=330%2C163&ssl=1)
Owámniyomni, a Dakota Name for “St. Anthony Falls”
![Lithograph of Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1874, by Hoffman. Chas. Shober & Co., Proprietors of Chicago Lith. Co. via The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/3034024sm-e1476384844635.jpg?fit=330%2C187&ssl=1)
Learning with the flow: My journey as a student working in the “real world” of research and communication
A major piece of Twin Cities news in summer 2015 was the closure of the St. Anthony Falls Lock on the Upper Mississippi. This garnered a lot of attention, and raised many questions from the community. At the time, I was taking a full-time summer course load, and was more worried about drowning in my chemistry and philosophy homework than about local river news.
![The muddy deserted streets of flood ravaged Princeville, North Carolina stand in silent testimony to the destruction wrought by the Tar River. Princeville, NC 9/28/99.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/405-e1461596239944.jpg?fit=330%2C220&ssl=1)
Princeville and the Environmental Landscape of Race
![Oil painting, 'St. Anthony Falls,' done in 1857 by Danish-born landscape artist Ferdinand Reichardt. It shows the Mississippi River, looking upstream toward the gorge and St. Anthony Falls prior to alteration for locks and dams](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/AV1988-45-399_fig1.jpg?fit=330%2C197&ssl=1)
The Once and Future River: A Present Snapshot
![lizdinovella. Rio Sumpul Mural. 2010. Arcatao, El Salvador. Via Flickr.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/offset-corrected-2-1-e1706804394323.jpg?fit=330%2C221&ssl=1)
Troubled Waters: Rivers in Latin American Imagination
The 2013 Hispanic Issues On Line volume, Troubled Waters: Rivers in Latin American Imagination, is a collection of essays that underscores an intellectual turn in Hispanic and Lusophone Studies toward the environment, and more specifically, the material, metaphysical, and literary “nature” emblematic of rivers that flow south of the Río Grande.
![A truck drives through floodwaters from Hurricane Matthew in Lumberton, N.C., Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2016. People were ordered to evacuate, and officials warned that some communities could be cut off by washed out roads or bridge closures.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Screen-Shot-2016-10-13-at-11.16.00-AM-e1476375587639.png?fit=330%2C219&ssl=1)
River that gave life to NC town now tears it apart
![Logo of the United States Department of Justice.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/doj300x200.png?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1)
Joint Statement, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe v. USAC
Department of Justice, Department of Interior, Army Corps of Engineers halt Dakota Access Pipeline, call for reexamination of tribal consultation processes. More background on #NoDAPL at nytimes.com or via your preferred search.
![A close up of a hand holding a mound of soil.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Screen-Shot-2016-08-03-at-9.40.43-PM-e1470278536133.png?fit=330%2C232&ssl=1)