The group says the Wentworth Group of Scientists has told it that it will withdraw from the Murray Darling Basin Authority's science forum because there will be no independent review.
The authority's chief Rob Freeman resigned earlier this month, after its first chair Mike Taylor left his post in January and was replaced by former senior NSW cabinet minister Craig Knowles.
A guide which the authority released last year angered farming communities in the basin, who objected to what they called its bias towards environmental needs.
The Wentworth Group is urging the government not to spend billions of dollars without adequate scrutiny.
"The federal government is spending over $8.9 billion on water reform. The Australian taxpayer must know what they are getting for their money and that they are going to get a healthy working river system for $8.9 billion," Tim Stubbs, an engineer with the Wentworth Group, said in a statement.
The original draft plan found that 3856 gigalitres would be a minimum volume of water that would need to be acquired from the 11,500 gigalitres of irrigators' entitlements to maintain the river.
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Tim Stubbs, environmental engineer with the Wentworth Group, said the nearly 4000 gigalitres identified in the authority's guide had been widely accepted as an appropriate lower limit.
''The authority has appeared to have done some work in the last four months that suddenly seems to go against work they produced in the guide which took them two years. We are concerned at that level of change in such a short space of time,'' Mr Stubbs told The Saturday Age.
The group did not attend a two-day science forum on the project on the basis that it did not believe the science being discussed was independent. It was there that the executives revealed the authority was going to draft a plan that recommended returning just 2800 gigalitres.
''Based on this information the government will spend $10 billion of taxpayers' money on very few people. We need to be sure this will deliver a healthy working river,'' Mr Stubbs said.
He said Wentworth did not know if it was a politically motivated decision, but it was a reason it wanted the science checked. ''If the science is fine, then that is fine,'' he said.
A spokeswoman for the authority said the chairman would ''not respond to questions based on unsourced rumours or possible leaked information as these questions prevent the chair from providing an informed, in-context response''.
''The Authority's conversation with communities and … stakeholders is continuing and the proposed plan remains a work in progress,'' she said.
The project has been mired in controversy, with chief executive Rob Freeman and chairman Mike Taylor resigning, a backlash from farmers who said a decrease in water entitlements would kill farms, and allegations of political interference.
Friends of the Earth said a drop to 2800 gigalitres was disastrous. ''According to the authority's own figures, 2800 gigalitres would lock in the death of at least a quarter of our red gum forests, and leave the Murray Mouth closed three times more frequently than natural," spokesman Jonathan La Nauze said.
Water Minister Tony Burke said the Murray-Darling Basin Authority was preparing its draft plan independently. ''I want to see this entire process deliver a healthy working basin,
GREEN groups say the Murray-Darling Basin Authority has ''cooked the books'' by downgrading almost 1400 identical submissions calling for higher environmental targets under a new basin plan, because they were driven by campaigns.
In an analysis posted online, the authority says almost half of the 3100 responses received on its proposals to reform the Murray-Darling are identical, mainly from environment groups.
The submissions are responding to the authority's ''guide'' to a new basin plan which sparked angry protests in farming communities last year. The guide recommends cuts of between 27 and 37 per cent to farmers' water rights, returning 3000 to 4000 billion litres of water every year.
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