I have seen situations where a stream maybe 3 feet wide and a couple of feet deep that developers tried to divert become engineering disasters of unthinkable proportion. I'm just saying what nature took millions of years to design is perfect. Let it be. Manage it but don't try to take it and make it ours.
That's a pile of baloney. Here in Chicago, the coarse of the Chicago River was reversed, and has stayed that way for years. It indeed can be successfully done, and has been in a variety of places (one is in Russia). You're selling human ingenuity short.
coarse = course (it's late).