Washington Post, The (DC) - May 15, 2005
Deceased Name: Leslie Ruth Allan
59, an environmental investigator and lawyer, died of cancer April 25 at her home in New York City.

A Washington native, she grew up in the District, Chevy Chase and Bethesda and was a 1963 graduate of Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1968, she moved to New York.

From 1970 to 1972, she was a research associate with the Council on Economic Priorities, where she was co-author of an investigative report examining the environmental records of the nation's largest paper manufacturers. The findings were later used by the Environmental Protection Agency to develop pollution standards.

She worked with Inform Inc., an environmental research organization in New York, from 1973 to 1978. While there, she co-wrote a three-volume report on the environmental records and misleading sales practices in the building industry, particularly in Florida and the Southwest. Ms. Allan testified at congressional hearings that led to tighter environmental regulations.

She graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 1981 and worked for two years as an assistant to a New York state judge. She then served as an assistant attorney general in New York from 1984 to 1987 before joining the environmental law firm of Berle, Kass and Case, where she worked from 1987 to 1989.

Ms. Allan returned to the office of the New York attorney general from 1989 to 1995 as chief of the office's Environmental Protection Bureau in New York City. From 1995 until her retirement in 2003, she was deputy commissioner for legal affairs in the New York City Department of Sanitation.

Survivors include her partner of 25 years, Jo-Anne Weissbart of New York; and a brother, Jonathan Allan of Fredericksburg.
Edition: F
Page: C11