The General Assembly finds and declares that those municipalities adjacent to or surrounding river areas often lack critical tools to safely revive and redevelop environmentally-challenged properties that will stimulate economic revitalization and create jobs in Illinois. Environmentally-challenged properties adjacent to or surrounding Illinois rivers are a threat to the health, safety, and welfare of the people of this State. Many of these environmentally-challenged properties adjacent to or surrounding rivers were former industrial areas that now, subject to appropriate environmental clean-up and remediation, would be ideal for office, residential, retail, hospitality, commercial, recreational, warehouse and distribution, and other economically productive uses. The cost of the cleaning and remediation of these environmentally-challenged properties is often the primary obstacle to returning these properties to a safe and economically productive use.
     Cooperative and continuous partnership among the State, through the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and the Environmental Protection Agency, municipalities adjacent to or surrounding rivers, and the private sector is necessary to appropriately encourage the cost-effective cleaning and remediation of these environmentally-challenged properties in order to bring about a safe and economically productive use of the properties.
     Therefore, it is declared to be the purpose of this Act to identify and initiate 3 pilot River Edge Redevelopment Zones to stimulate the safe and cost-effective re-use of environmentally-challenged properties adjacent to or surrounding rivers by means of tax incentives or grants. On or after the effective date of this amendatory Act of the 97th General Assembly, the Department may certify an additional pilot River Edge Redevelopment Zone in the City of Peoria.