\u201cCode brown\u201d is pool lingo for \u201csomeone has pooed or vomited in the pool\u201d, and it\u2019s the part of going to a public swimming pool that everyone would rather not experience. Having to evacuate a pool for a code brown cleaning sullies the whole experience; that water dripping on the floor has had contact with the contents of someone else\u2019s bowels. Pool staff don\u2019t like cleaning it up. The pool loses money from people who can\u2019t attend lessons. Journalists, writing articles about the topic in the name of public service, have to spend the greater part of their working day picturing excrement bobbing in the blue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There can be more serious consequences too: faeces can spread nasty bugs, and earlier this year swimming pools in the Wellington region were linked to an outbreak of cryptosporidiosis<\/a> \u2013 several had to be fully drained for thorough cleaning.<\/p>\n Code brown events seem to be on the rise. As of the end of October, Invercargill\u2019s Splash Palace had had to close 30 times in 2025 for faecal incidents, resulting in 58 hours of unplanned pool closure time. At that point, the pool had already had more incidents than the 28 in the entirety of 2024. After a closure last week,<\/a> people were let back into the pool after 1.5 hours, then \u201ca small amount of additional matter was found\u201d, according to Stephen Cook, Invercargill City Council aquatic services manager. The pool had to be closed for another half hour.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the end of November, the Hawke\u2019s Bay Aquatic Centre said the pool had closed 20 times due to \u201cinvasive matter\u201d in the last six months, and incidents had been increasing. The pool had issued an awareness post on Facebook asking pool-goers to \u201cdo their bit to prevent further disruptions\u201d.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t the first time pools have hit headlines for unwanted body ejections. In Auckland in 2022, pools had to close more than 400 times for \u201ccode brown<\/a>\u201d incidents. In the last full financial year (June 2024-25) there were 595 hours of closures. Since July 2025, there have been 318 hours of closures due to \u201cbio hazard incidents). This might seem a lot, but given that the council operates or oversees 27 pools through the region, less than 1% of swimming lessons had to be cancelled or rescheduled as a result. \u201cWe always aim to provide welcoming, family-friendly environments with high hygiene standards, particularly in our pools. However, accidents do happen,\u201d said Arvid Ditchburn, general manager of pools and leisure at Auckland Council.<\/p>\n In 2019, Christchurch\u2019s QEII pool had to close a pool 328 times due to faecal matter or vomit<\/a>. Most of those closures were in the toddlers\u2019 pool and teaching pool. Auckland Council has run educational campaigns<\/a> trying to prevent these incidents from happening. Because not all incidents are tracked, it\u2019s impossible to say for sure whether incidents are on the rise.\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s a clear protocol when the waters have been muddied by code browns. At Splash Palace, \u201cthis includes closing the affected pool, cleaning up the material, super-chlorinating the water and keeping the pool closed for between 30 minutes and 12 hours, depending on the type of material involved\u201d, said Cook. The process is externally verified by PoolSafe, an independent quality management system for public pools.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was difficult to place an exact cost on the effect of the closures, Cook said. \u201cHowever, these incidents use additional materials, take up staff time and affect our admissions and regular schedule of swimming classes.\u201d<\/p>\n Better yet, of course, is to prevent these incidents in the first place. With children the most likely culprits, Christchurch City Council has a page of advice for parents<\/a>. Before entering a pool, they recommend \u201callowing food to settle\u201d and taking kids to the toilet. Children need to know that it\u2019s OK to leave a swimming lesson to go to the toilet; no one should be in the pool if they\u2019ve had diarrhoea in the last two weeks and swimming nappies should be checked regularly.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important for people of all ages and abilities to be able to access pools, which provide safe places to exercise and play at all times of year. Most public pools in New Zealand are run by councils as a community facility, from shallow toddler pools to swirling lazy rivers and lanes for doing laps. Making pools accessible to all means that some incidents of bodily fluids (and worse, bodily solids) are inevitable, despite precautions.\u00a0<\/p>\n While the cause of faecal incidents in pools tends to be pretty obvious, dealing with poo in the water isn\u2019t just an issue indoors. Sewage overflows plague outdoor swimming spots in New Zealand\u2019s cities. Unlike code browns in swimming pools, fixing contamination in these areas requires major infrastructure upgrades and investment to prevent.\u00a0<\/p>\n Auckland\u2019s Central Interceptor sewage pipe will be fully operational from 2026, replacing ageing pipes where stormwater and wastewater are combined \u2013 meaning big rain storms often lead to sewage spills on Auckland\u2019s central beaches. The pipe is intended to last for a century, and cleaner swimming will be a major benefit. Elsewhere in the country, like in Wellington, water is generally safe but swimmers are recommended to not dive in for 48 hours following heavy rain.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s good, then, that chlorine is so efficient at killing bacteria \u2013 and that pools are able to deal with faecal incidents much more quickly and efficiently than politicians and bureaucrats have been able to with the same trouble in oceans and rivers. This summer, if you make it to an indoor or outdoor<\/a> pool to enjoy the good parts of publicly subsidised bodies of water, spare a thought for the pool staff who have to deal with code browns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nothing ruins a nice summery dip like poo in the pool. So how common is it, what\u2019s the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[23066,492,111,43,139,69,110033,2935,17933,45569],"class_list":{"0":"post-169793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-auckland-council","9":"tag-comments-enabled","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-poo","15":"tag-society","16":"tag-swimming","17":"tag-swimming-pool"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Swimmers in a clean pool at the Paris Olympics (Photo: Adam Pretty\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Pools are spaces for everyone. (Photo: Getty Images)<\/p>\n