Point Pleasant Park is ready to reopen after a massive cleanup, but another popular local park will be closed indefinitely in the aftermath of Hurricane Juan.

Long Lake Provincial Park didn’t suffer anything like the damage that flattened large swaths of forest in Point Pleasant. But the Natural Resources Department has no plan to remove the sign that declares it off limits.

“It’s not a managed park. Unfortunately, it’s not a priority when it comes to our other operational parks,” department spokeswoman Susan Mader-Zinck said yesterday.

She said the department is busy trying to fix parks like Rainbow Haven Beach that were damaged by last September’s hurricane, and officials won’t even look at the Long Lake damage until sometime over the summer.

There are still plenty of visitors at Long Lake, a 2,095-hectare wilderness area sandwiched between Cowie Hill and Exhibition Park. A parking lot on St. Margarets Bay Road remains busy, and a dam off Old Sambro Road is bound to be busy with swimmers, if the weather ever improves.

Mader-Zinck said the province isn’t taking any measures to keep people out.

“I don’t know if it’s illegal, but you’re in there at your own risk,” she said.

Halifax Fairview NDP MLA Graham Steele said some responsible park users will be turned away because of the closed sign. He said it’s a shame the park could be closed for the summer because of government staffing shortages.

“That’s the problem; it’s not the park that’s the problem,” Steele said.

There are some areas of localized damage, he said, but few places that could be considered dangerous.

“It’s a wilderness park — there are inherent dangers and always will be,” the MLA said.

Someone has cleared debris from the park with a chainsaw. Rod Lake, the volunteer president of the Long Lake Provincial Park Association, didn’t want to say who had done the work because the province is discouraging it.

Lake said there are enough blown-down trees that the park is probably not safe for all users, but about 70 per cent of the trails are accessible.

Long Lake’s biggest problem is not Hurricane Juan, but its popularity and the absence of a management plan, which has been in the works for years. Lake estimated that use has increased 400 per cent in the last two years, and the extra people are damaging habitat.

“I maintain it’s the most heavily used park in the province,” he said. “DNR doesn’t agree with that.”