Belleville Lake (Wayne County, Michigan)
Belleville Lake is a 2-square-mile man-made lake located in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. It was created in 1925 when the Eastern Michigan Edison Company built the French Landing Dam and Powerhouse along the Huron River. The 28-foot-high dam was the last in a series of five dams along the river, creating electricity from hydropower until 1962. The hydropower plant was refurbished in 1988 and has a nameplate production of 1.7 MW. It contains 17,780 acre-feet of water in the seven-mile-long lake. The small community of Rawsonville was flooded out by the dam.
The lake is used for boating and fishing, although the dam has restricted the passage of some fish species and eliminated a commercial mussel fishery which provided mother of pearl for buttons in the early 1900s A 2002 EPA report listed the water quality as good but algae blooms from phosphorus run-off are a known issue.
