Nixon did establish the EPA but I don't think he knew what he was getting in to. He nominated William Ruckleshaus to head it up but Ruckleshaus was a bad person. He was from the radical environmental lobby as their lawyer. He represented and was a member of Zero Population Growth which wanted to limit human population by various means. Ruckleshaus threw the trail and investigation into DDT. Judge Sweeney saw nothing wrong with the use of DDT if done according to instructions. Ruckleshaus rewrote the report to condemn DDT. Millions of African children died of malaria without DDT. This was predicted in 1971 and compatriot Donald Wooster said that they (African children) had to die from something. An estimated 18 million lives lost to date. This dwarf's what Hitler did and it was accomplished by the US environmental lobby.
Was Nixon a progressive? First you have to define progressive and then you have to sort through Nixon's policies. His words put him to the right of JFK, and if JFK was a conservative...