Michael H. Levin, lawyer, government official, environmental expert, and celebrated poet, has died at 81

Michael H. Levin, 81, formerly of Philadelphia, the first director of regulatory reform at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; former lawyer for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and National Labor Relations Board; longtime renewable energy financier and developer; award-winning poet; and author, died Tuesday, Jan. 2, of pancreatic cancer at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington.

Born in Philadelphia in 1942 and a graduate of Central High School and the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Levin left the city after college and constructed a 54-year career in Washington as an expert in renewable energy, environmental financing, government policy writing, workplace safety, and labor law.

He briefly considered going to medical school during college and nearly became a playwright after completing a prestigious two-year postgraduate Thouron fellowship at Oxford University in England. Instead, he graduated from Harvard Law School in 1969 and spent most of the 1970s and ‘80s as a lawyer and director at the EPA, OSHA and NLRB.

He helped draft the EPA’s consequential emissions trade policy in 1987 and set the stage for the 1990 Clean Air Act. He won the agency’s Gold Medal for Exceptional Service in 1985 and was a nominee for the federal government’s National Public Service Award.

Mr. Levin was an elegant writer and meticulous editor, and he sharpened policy text at the EPA and OSHA, and offered innovative proposals to develop and finance projects. “He had an impact on the nature of environmental policy,” said his wife, Nora Jean.

He was special assistant for complex litigation for seven years at OSHA in the 1970s and led a presidential task force on workplace safety in 1978. He argued or participated in hundreds of federal court cases and earlier was an appellate attorney for the NLRB.

Former EPA colleagues called him “relentlessly positive” and “brilliant, creative, and impatient for change” in tributes. He served a congressional fellowship with U.S. Rep. Andrew Maguire and Sen. Edward Kennedy in 1979, and Maguire said Mr. Levin “is the one true polymath I have encountered in my life, a Renaissance man for every season.”

He left government in 1988 to work with several private firms, including his own, as managing director, general counsel, principal, and partner. He founded Michael H. Levin Law Group in 2007, and said in a 2022 online interview with the American Bar Association: “I’ve spent my legal career at the intersection of law, policy, and economics.”

Mark Schneider, former director of the Peace Corp, said in a tribute: “He renewed the energy of all of us, both for causes he cared about and from the love and caring that he consistently conveyed.”

Mr. Levin wrote dozens of articles and essays about environmental issues for national publications, including a recurring column for the Journal of Air & Waste Management Association. He spoke at forums and conferences, and served in leadership roles on committees and panels.

He also published four books of poetry and won awards from Writer’s Digest, American Independent Writers, and other literary organizations. Watered Colors, published in 2014, and 2018′s Man Overboard were praised by the Washington Independent Review of Books and other critics.

In 2023, he published Watching Bees that includes the poem “To My Grandsons, When You’ve Grown Old.” It starts: “If you read this then/you barely may remember me:/a whisper; two notes from the span/of my voice — perhaps a shadow picture/of the way I cuddled in your beds/at night reading the last lines/of your evening books, confused with images from photographs.”

He also coauthored two nonfiction memoirs, A Border Town in Poland and Firebird, with his wife. They were the perfect team, she said, because he would often take readers on elaborate paths from Point A to Point C, and she would ask, “What about Point B?”

Then they would rewrite together. “He loved words,” his wife said. “He liked elegant phrases.”

Michael Henry Levin was born Nov. 24, 1942, and spent most of his youth in the Oak Lane section of Philadelphia. He graduated from Central in 1960 and earned a bachelor’s degree in literature and philosophy at Penn in 1964. He earned a second bachelor’s degree in literature on his Thouron fellowship in 1971.

He met fellow Penn student Nora Jean Bieler in 1964, and they married in 1966, and had sons Jeremy and Daniel. They lived in England and Cambridge, Mass., and moved to Washington in 1969.

Mr. Levin played tennis and chess, hunted mushrooms, and doted on his dogs. He and his wife enjoyed movies, opera, and the theater.

“He was easygoing and patient but could also be intense and tenacious if he had to,” his wife said. His son Jeremy said: “He was a devoted husband, cherished father, and grandfather known for his gentleness and kindness.”

In addition to his wife and sons, Mr. Levin is survived by two grandsons, a brother, and other relatives

Funeral services were held Jan. 5. A memorial service is to be held later.

Donations in his name may be made to Papers Please, 3605 Tilden St., NW Washington, DC 20008.