no, the inspector would not know. i would suggest you call and arrange a a meeting between you, the inspector, and your contractor. tell the inspector the contractor and you disagree on whether this matters or not. regardless of how this goes, it is going to cost YOU money. either you have to tear down the deck and be out what you owed the contractor for it, or you have ot pull up and move the tank and be out this cost. like i said earlier, if the contractor hit the tank when digging the posts he knew it was there, and that is your ONLY hope of laying blame off on him. if you tank is deeper than the posts go and he did not hit it, then he had a reasonable expectation of the tank not being there just like you and the inspector. in my area the tank HAS to go where the drawing shows. the health dept tells you where on your land you can put it and then you build your house around that. i have seen people who had a choice of build the house sideways or build a different house because the health dept told them there was only 1 place they could put the tank.

If that was my house and I was building it, I wouldn’t use that 4x4 for load bearing. That said, you’re likely dealing with the building manager who has a responsibility for ensuring the home gets “turned over” on time and within budget. Delays and rework reflect on his/her performance. These companies use lots of sub-contractors and you seem to be getting a non-committal “maybe” until it all gets buttoned up at which stage, the new homeowner just wants to get in the home. It costs money to get the subs back. Go over your building representative’s head to the next stage of management. You may not get satisfaction, but at some point, at least you have worked the chain of command and supervisors are aware of the issue. That’s the best I can recommend.

The shortcut to a cohesive look would be to paint all wood in railings and posts white...leaving stair steps to match the floors...the risers could be white .....the railing attached to the wall... of course...needs to be changed to match other railings...in style and color....a stair runner to match the style of the home could be added for color and interest if you leave the steps in all wood finish

This post is in a very odd place. It is doubtful, that someone put it there because, they wanted it to be there. There has to be a reason, and the only one that can answer that is a structural engineer or a top notch contractor.