To McKeesport Mayor James Brewster, the need for economic development in the Mon Valley has never been more apparent than it was Thursday night when a young man was killed after an apparent drug deal went sour.

Working on very little sleep because of the shooting and subsequent arrests, Brewster addressed a conference of officials from all levels of government and local agencies about the need to provide economic opportunities that are part of legal enterprises.

Those economic opportunities are going to have to grow on land that is so polluted today that no one wants it.

But where some people see the Mon Valley's glory days in the past, county Chief Executive Dan Onorato said there is hope for the future now that the county has money from the state to clean up those old messes.

"We expect to start having hundreds of acres cleaned and cleared in the next year or two," Onorato said yesterday at a conference on economic development in the Mon Valley.

Unveiled yesterday was a report on economic development strategy for the region developed by Simon Tripp of Tripp-Umbach Associates. Onorato said it will be the last study of the region before some real action begins.

"We're not going to get stuck in what I call the paralysis of the analysis," Onorato said.

He said the state has set aside $490 million toward the environmental cleanup of industrial sites in Allegheny County.

Allegheny County has 2,000 acres of vacant land that could be developed if it didn't need to be cleaned first. Onorato said 80 percent of that land is in the Mon Valley.

"The problem down here isn't that you don't have land. You don't have shovel-ready land," he said.

The plan for the region is not to build more shops and restaurants to re-create The Waterfront in Homestead. The plan calls for developing industrial jobs and helping companies that are already in the region -- such as chemical manufacturing plants -- expand here.

"We actually have a very large concentration of these chemistry companies," he said, adding that jobs in chemical plants pay about $68,000 a year and come with health insurance.

He said the old industries employ new technologies so the manufacturing processes are clean.

Tripp, who prepared the development strategy for the region, said one of the impediments to businesses is the fragmentation of governments: the Mon Valley consists of 30 municipalities and 13 school districts with three councils of governments.

His plan calls for creating a Mon Valley Development Center, which would probably be in McKeesport but would be run by Allegheny County's Department of Community Development.

"We avoided the highly contentious issue of municipal consolidation," he said.

His plan also calls for improving the scientific education of children graduating from local high schools and improving mass transit and roads in the Mon Valley.

Brewster, the mayor of McKeesport, said development will not come easily. He recalled overhearing a woman at a party say she wouldn't go to McKeesport because she was afraid. He said local officials have to turn that perception around.

"Why should we have to overcome that obstacle? We should market what we have. We should brag about what we have," he said.