Unless the context clearly indicates otherwise, as used in this article:

(a) "Commercial project" means real or personal property or both, including any buildings, improvements, additions, extensions, replacements, appurtenances, lands, rights in land, water rights, franchises, machinery, equipment, furnishings, landscaping, utilities, railroad spurs and sidings, parking facilities, farms, parking wharfs, approaches and roadways or any number or combination of the foregoing necessary or desirable in connection with a commercial enterprise or incidental thereto and includes, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, hotels and motels and related facilities, nursing homes and other health care facilities, facilities for participatory or spectator sports, conventions or trade show facilities, airport facilities, shopping centers, office buildings, residential real property for family units, and mass commuting facilities, dormitories, apartments and other housing facilities for the students and faculties of institutions of higher education, instructional buildings and other facilities used in connection with nonpublic institutions of higher education, facilities providing housing for the elderly, including, but not limited to, life care facilities, congregate living facilities and adult residential facilities.

(b) "Committee" means the industrial revenue bond allocation committee created by section three-a of this article.

(c) "County commission" means the governmental body created by section twenty-two, article VIII of the West Virginia Constitution.

(d) "Governmental body" means any city, town, village, county, public service district, sanitary district, political subdivision or any other similar public entity now or hereafter created, having power to issue revenue bonds, and the West Virginia public energy authority.

(e) "Industrial project" means any site, structure, building, industrial park, water dock, wharf or port facilities, fixtures, machinery, equipment and related facility, including real and personal property, or any combination thereof, suitable as a factory, mill or shop, or processing, assembly, manufacturing or fabricating project, or warehouse or distribution facility, or facilities for the extraction, production or distribution of mineral resources and related facilities, or sewage or solid waste disposal facilities, or facilities for the local furnishing of electric energy or gas, or facilities for the furnishing of water, if available on reasonable demand to members of the general public, or storage or training facilities related to any of the foregoing, or research or development facility or pollution abatement or control facility and includes the reconstruction, modernization and modification of any existing industrial project for the abatement or control of industrial pollution.

(f) "Industrial pollution" means any gaseous, liquid or solid waste substances or adverse thermal effects or combinations thereof resulting from any process of industry, manufacturing, trade or business or from the development, processing or recovery of any natural resources which pollute the land, water or air of this state.