Napier's Emerson and Dalton Sts close to vehicles as underground power cable replaced

A night shift at work at the electric cable fault site in the Napier CBD last week. Photo / Doug Laing

Part of Napier's CBD shopping centre roadway will be closed to traffic for four days this week as electricity supply company Unison Networks finishes almost a fortnight's work on underground cable replacement.

Crews worked through the hours of darkness last week identifying the precise location of faults at the intersection of Emerson and Dalton Sts.

But the work on the replacement this week means the one-way east-bound sector of Emerson St between Clive Sq East and Dalton St, and Dalton St between Emerson and Tennyson Sts will be closed to vehicles from Tuesday to Friday.

Unison customer relationship manager Danny Gough said that with the "backfeeding" capability of the electricity network, there have been no major outages related to the faults, but the decision had been made to replace the cable at the trouble spot rather than repair it.

Outages because of the faults would have been limited to little more than the briefest moments as supply switched to the alternative, he said. There had been some planned outages within the work period.

The work involves a trench starting from west of Dalton St diagonally into the street, but it doesn't affect pedestrian access to businesses or the street dining areas.

With reinstatement of the paving the area is expected to be back to normal early next week, he said.