More than half of Victoria's public pools have reached the end of their working life, and local councils say they are becoming too expensive to keep and fix. Research by the ABC has found most of the state's more than 260 council-run pools are more than 50 years old, the point at which they typically hit their end of life, according to Royal Life Saving Society Australia (RLSSA). Some Victorian councils are having to find hundreds of thousands of dollars extra in their rate-capped budgets just to keep their aging pools open and meet basic operating requirements. The Indigo Shire Council in the state's north east is among those feeling the financial pinch. It was hit with a 56 per cent increase to operational costs for its five outdoor public swimming pools this financial year. Council chief executive Trevo Ierino said some pools could be closed indefinitely if more support was not offered. "The challenges of keeping a pool going forward are just going to get harder and harder," he said. 'Coming to the end of their life' The cost of replacing, maintaining and even upgrading pools varies. Beechworth's swimming pool, which was opened in 1978, has an estimated replacement bill of $14 million. The Bass Coast Shire said it needed at least $45 million to replace its aquatic and leisure centre in Wonthaggi, which was also built in the 1970s. Data from RLSSA revealed up to 40 per cent of local government-run public pools would likely need serious refurbishment or outright replacement at a cost of more than $8 billion within a decade. RLSSA general manager of capability and industry, RJ Houston, said apart from cosmetic transformations such as upgrading change rooms or kiosk renovations, many facilities had had limited to no life-expanding work done to underground pipes and the pool tanks. "There's very, very few pools in the regional areas with those old aging pools where they have had a serious renovation to the pool tank itself," Mr Houston said. "It's very, very rare that it's happened. So, the majority of those pools built in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, are very much coming to the end of their life." Regional pools going under Maryborough residents in central Victoria have just sweltered through another scorching summer without their public pool, after it reached its end of life in 2022. Residents will not be able to enjoy a swim there until it is demolished and rebuilt, but there is uncertainty about when that will happen. The Central Goldfields Shire Council, which manages the Maryborough pool, unsuccessfully applied for a federal grant last year, and was forced to withdraw a state government grant application that required a co-contribution of $4 million. Maryborough Swimming Club president Duncan Bates said the closure could impact the next generation of children learning to swim. "Our goal is not to have Olympic champions, our goal is just to get kids swimming, to love the sport, to get the most out of it and hopefully take that into their adult lives," he said. "It's a big blow to the community." The State of Australian Aquatic Facilities 2025 report by RLSSA shared similar findings. "People living in many regional and outer metropolitan areas lack access to aquatic facilities for lessons, leisure and fitness," the report said. "The gap in access contributes to social inequities." It comes after a summer in which 104 people drowned in waterways and swimming pools across the country, according to RLSSA's Summer Drowning Report 2024–25. While the report found drownings in Victoria were down by 12 per cent, nationally drownings were up 5 per cent from last summer and 14 per cent on the five-year average. Maryborough is not the only pool in the state to close due to aging infrastructure. Nearby Rochester has also been without a pool since 2022, and is awaiting funds to build a new one. Last year, the Southern Grampians Shire Council decommissioned its pool at Glenthompson, while the City of Ballarat closed its Brown Hill Pool in 2023 and is replacing it with a splash park. The Yarra Ranges' Kilsyth Centenary Pool, built in the 1960s, was closed permanently in 2023 due to significant defects. And Knox Council has closed an outdoor pool at Knox Leisureworks that was built in 1965 due to significant structural issues. Pool infrastructure struggling The Melbourne Olympics in 1956 spurred competitive swimming in Australia and a boom in municipal pool construction. Hannah Lewi from the University of Melbourne's Architecture, Building and Planning Faculty said pools were reaching their end of life due to the materials many were made with. "Concrete fails after some period of time and perhaps probably some of these pools were actually built fairly economically using a whole bunch of fundraising, government money," Professor Lewi said. "So they fail in terms of the concrete and then they leak basically, and then that's really costly in terms of water consumption." Grants fail to keep pools afloat State and federal governments offer grants to help councils provide pool upgrades and maintenance, but councils say they are piecemeal and competitive. The Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) said better access for community infrastructure funding would be a priority for local government leaders heading into this year's federal election. "That is something that we see as important," MAV president Jennifer Anderson said. "A community infrastructure fund that is readily available that you don't have to apply for with a whole lot of bureaucracy involved, to really assist us to provide those assets to the communities." A spokesperson for Catherine King, the federal Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, said major grants were already helping upgrade community swimming pools. A Victorian government spokesperson said it was building quality community sport infrastructure right across the state.