A US Army review of Seqwater's official account of the 2011 flood is a waste of taxpayers' money, according to a leading hydrologist.
Dam expert Max Winders said the move, announced this week by Water Supply Minister Mark McArdle, was a "Clayton's review - the review you have when you're not having a review''.
It would "tick off the Seqwater report and give it an aura of respectability'' rather than subject it to a proper audit, Mr Winders said.
During hearings in February the lawyer assisting the flood inquiry called Seqwater's account a "fiction'' concocted by the flood engineers.
Mr Winders said the review's narrow terms of reference and focus on dam safety meant it would fail to examine the most important issue: whether the state's dams were used most effectively for flood mitigation.
"We deserve a better review than this,'' he said.
"These guys shouldn't be here to look at dam safety.
"They should be here to look at flood mitigation.''
Mr McArdle defended the exercise, saying it was a recommendation of the Flood Inquiry and that the people conducting it, from the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, would have a "fairly wide ambit''.
They would be able to ask questions of Government employees, but any answers would have to be in writing, "to avoid any suggestion of anything not being kosher''.
"It may open a whole new stream of inquiry,'' Mr McArdle said. But Premier Campbell Newman had already ruled out any further royal commission.
The report of the $170,000 review, expected in three or four weeks, is confined to the "objective data'' in the Seqwater report.
It is not allowed to examine the conduct of the flood engineers, three of whom were referred to the Crime and Misconduct Commission.
The CMC said yesterday that it was "close to finalising'' its review of inquiry.
www.CourierMail.com.au
11.8.12
