Grounds work has begun on Napier City Council's $30 million sewerage plant - despite an appeal yet to be settled in the Environment Court.
The council is preparing the Waitangi Rd site in Awatoto to build a biological trickling filter (BTF) plant, scheduled for commissioning at the end of next year.
It will be similar to the one built at East Clive by Hastings District Council.
Recently the High Court ordered the Environment Court to take another look at an appeal by Napier man Wayne Church who questioned the resource consent permit issued for the Napier council to operate the new wastewater plant.
Mr Church believed the new consent would not be able to achieve the same, or better, level of wastewater treatment guaranteed by the current consent conditions.
The current consent to discharge into Hawke Bay required the council to have a system where biomass or "human sludge" was removed from the flow out to sea.
"That was something ratepayers negotiated for back in 2003 for the current consent and we're paying a levy to have it, which is about $1 million a year to the Napier City Council," Mr Church told Hawke's Bay Today earlier this month.
"The new consent cuts right across the top of the original agreement ratepayers had.
"We believed we were getting what we were paying for but now we are going to be stuck with second-rate, 100-year-old technology."
This week Mr Church said he was surprised to hear work had begun on the new plant but agreed his appeal was aimed at the way the plant was to operate and not its construction.
Napier City Council chief executive Neil Taylor said starting the work before the conclusion of the appeal was "a matter of timing".
The council had a 25-year consent to operate the plant, granted by the Hawke's Bay Regional Council, but it required the plant be commissioned by the end of this year. Work under way now included Holcim Hastings Quarry's delivery of 30,000cu m of crushed rock over the next couple of months.
Another month will be needed to compact the fill in 250mm layers.
The council expected a start will be made on constructing the main effluent pump station, the first major component of the plant infrastructure, in autumn next year.