Toowoomba City Council's secret bore consultants revealed ...

... but told not to talk.

Excerpt from the Chronicle:

Consultants told to keep quiet on bore

1 September 2007

The consultants who advised Toowoomba City Council it was not necessary to check the salinity of the $2.4 million Wetalla bore have been slapped with a gag order.

When contacted by The Chronicle yesterday, Australasian Groundwater & Environmental Consultants Pty Ltd based in Brisbane said they had been directed hours earlier by council not to make any comments about their role in the bore which is drawing water that contains three times the acceptable level of salt.

Council maintains the $300,000 test bore sunk in October last year was designed to assess the geology of the site, not the water quality.

Council’s manager of Laboratory Services, Alan Kleinschmidt yesterday said advice had been received from the Department of Natural Resources and Water as well as the consultancy firm that recommended the reliability of bores sunk into the Great Artesian Basin meant it was not necessary to check the water quality before millions of dollars were spent completing the bore.

But the department denied this, saying its “only role in the ... project was to approve council’s authority to take water from the Great Artesian Basin and provide bore data to council’s consultant”.

The department said it was surprised with the water quality from the bore “given all evidence from other nearby bores that tap this underground aquifer” such as the nearby successful Geham bore.
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If the Toowoomba City Council has nothing to hide, why slap a 'gag order' on the consultants ...