DANVERS - Mary Bruzzese of Peabody brought her wheelchair-bound son and daughter to the Hunt Center yesterday to fight the closure of an outpatient clinic where they receive aquatic therapy in a warm-water pool.

Both children, Alec, 11, and Anna, 7, have a mitochondrial disorder, a form of muscular dystrophy. Time spent with therapists in the 96-degree pool relaxes their muscles and helps with their mobility, their mother said.

Bruzzese has been bringing Alec to the pool each week since he was 6 months old.

However, in a matter of weeks, those visits will end. Woburn-based New England Rehabilitation Hospital, which runs the indoor pool, is closing a 9,000-square-foot outpatient clinic as its lease from the Hunt Center's owner, Northeast Health System Inc., expires Feb. 29.

Parents of children who use the facility testified yesterday at a state Department of Public Health hearing held when hospitals discontinue an "essential service." About a dozen people attended.

"Oh my god, I can't replace this," said Andrea Mozur of Danvers, who has been taking her 16-year-old son, Jesse, to the pool for almost a decade. He has cerebral palsy.

"It's a community resource for us," she said. "We've learned about other therapies, we meet other people. It's not just getting in a pool and moving around."

"Like I said to you," Bruzzese told Joel Rudin, CEO of the rehabilitation hospital, "if you have a disabled child, you would understand."

Ray Cryan, suitability coordinator for the DPH, took testimony from parents and hospital officials but made no decisions.

It was unclear yesterday, in speaking with representatives of both hospital systems, whose decision it was to close the outpatient clinic and its unique pool.

"They did notify us they are not renewing the lease for the space," said Heather Jones, spokeswoman for Northeast Health System. "Unfortunately, it's a decision they made. We don't have any control over that."

Northeast, Rudin said, "has not granted us the opportunity to renew our lease. ... Certainly, our intent was not to leave this community as a care provider."

Most of the 13 people who work at the outpatient clinic will be transferred, and a nearby inpatient clinic will remain open. The facility was formerly known as the Healthsouth Rehabilitation Services, with outpatient care that included physical, occupational and speech therapies.

Bruzzese and a few other parents of severely disabled children praised the level of care they received and said they did not understand why the pool had to close. She said the pool has allowed her son to avoid surgeries over the years, and parents like her would do what it takes to keep the facility open.

"It's a community need that is filled here," said Connie Rowe of Byfield. Rowe's 12-year-old son, Kevin, uses the pool for therapy to stretch his muscles as he suffers from cerebral palsy.

She and 23 other families will be left high and dry by the closure, she said, because there is not a facility like it on the North Shore.

She said it's a hike to go to Woburn, where the nearest warm-water pool is located. Pools at local YMCAs and other facilities are not kept warm enough and lack special lifts for wheelchair-bound children. Other facilities do not readily accept the state's MassHealth insurance program, and so-called land-based therapies are not as effective, Rowe said.

"The aquatic therapy is something special," Rowe said. "It can't be replicated on land."

Northeast is seeking ways to provide "land-based pediatric services" to fill the void, Jones said.

Last year, Northeast Health System, the parent of Beverly Hospital, put the hilltop Hunt Center, 75 Lindall St., up for sale rather than refocus it as a campus for senior programs and services. Most of the operations at the Hunt Center have moved down Maple Street to the new, 99,000-square-foot Beverly Hospital at Danvers Medical and Day Surgery Center, which lacks a therapeutic pool.

The 168-bed New England Rehabilitation Hospital in Woburn is owned by Newton-based health care company Five Star Quality Care Inc.