Friday, March 14, 2008; B07

Wallace Lamar Duncan, 70, a Washington lawyer who specialized in energy, utility and environmental issues, died of complications from Hodgkin's lymphoma Feb. 22 at Virginia Hospital Center-Arlington. He was a resident of Arlington County.

Mr. Duncan, who formed his first law firm in 1971, was president of Duncan, Weinberg, Genzer and Pembroke. Along with the general practice of law, he participated extensively in utility consulting work, rate and service proceedings and litigation, environmental consulting, and litigation and natural-resource development.

He was a charismatic and dogged lawyer who guided his firm into prominence in the energy and natural-resource arena and was well-respected, particularly in the consumer-owned utility community.

In the 1970s, his firm represented environmental groups that were challenging the Army Corps of Engineers' plan to build a canal across Florida connecting the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. After two sections of the canal had already had been built and much legal wrangling, the firm secured the first injunction granted under the National Environmental Policy Act and stopped the Cross-Florida Barge Canal project from proceeding.

In the 1980s, he represented 51 municipal utilities in New York in a push for lower electricity rates. From 1982 until the reallocation of the electrical output of Hoover Dam was resolved in 1987, Mr. Duncan was a special deputy attorney general for Nevada.

Mr. Duncan was born in Salt Lake City and attended the University of Utah before graduating magna cum laude from American University in 1960. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, while in college and law school, he worked on the Capitol Hill police force.

In 1961, he graduated summa cum laude from American's Washington College of Law, where he was editor of the American University Law Review. In 1962, he received a second law degree from Georgetown University Law Center following his E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship for graduate study in trial advocacy there.

For the next three years, Mr. Duncan specialized in natural resources and development issues as special assistant to the solicitor of U.S. Department of the Interior. One of his initial successes was preventing efforts to rezone a scenic portion of the Potomac River shoreline in Northern Virginia for condominium development.

He joined a large Arizona firm as managing partner in its Washington office in 1965 and was Washington counsel for the Arizona Interstate Stream Commission and the Salt River Project from 1965 through 1970. A year later, he started his own firm.

His marriage to Barbara Duncan ended in divorce. A son from that marriage, Richey Duncan, died in 1976.

Survivors include his wife, Donnetta Duncan of Arlington; two children from his first marriage, Berney Duncan of Springfield and Ashley Duncan of Arlington; a stepdaughter, Kristine Hansen of Las Cruces, N.M.; two children from his second marriage, Whitney Duncan of San Diego and Andrew Duncan of Charlottesville; his mother, Phyllis Duncan of Salt Lake City; four sisters; and four grandchildren.

-- Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb