ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to understand the covert colonialism that pervaded urban discourse surrounding the construction of Grapevine Reservoir. It argues that discursive practices of DFW’s water networking project were substantially the same as those of overtly extractive colonialization, and characterize DFW-area water resource development as a process of settler colonialism. The engineering and economic discourses that drove the construction of Grapevine Reservoir produced a set of power relations that covertly colonized Denton Creek space, produced it as terra sacer, and inevitably tightened urban control over all space. The core-periphery model was developed to account for patterns of uneven development and economic power. Grapevine Reservoir was constructed as a site of value extraction, and the Town of Grapevine became an urban settlement in the midst of a generic expanse of colonized space. The intimate relationship between hydraulic networks and colonialism saturates discourse intersecting with the Grapevine Reservoir project.
