The grants went to a wide variety of groups including environmental lobbies that sue the agency and senior citizen centers that function like temporary worker agencies.

Among the grants listed in agency documents as awarded to nonprofits:

- A $1,500 grant to help a university group create a "solid waste board game" entitled the Can Man Game.

- More than $47,000 to help the Seattle Mariners professional baseball team, which had an $80 million payroll last year, develop a recycling program at its new stadium.

- $150,000 to research the "role of lighting in human performance and productivity."

- More than $300,000 over eight years for a "golf and the environment" project to encourage golf courses that rely on pesticides and fertilizers to be more environmentally friendly.

- Nearly $100,000 to study how to reduce methane gas emissions from livestock in the Ukraine. That was part of millions of dollars in grants that benefitted countries outside the United States.

The AP analysis of EPA grants and grant extensions to nonprofits found that six of the top 10 recipients between 1993 and 2001 weren't environmental groups or researchers, but rather seniors groups that received tens of millions of dollars to hire older Americans as temporary workers for environmental projects. About 1,800 seniors are currently employed under the program.

The AARP Foundation topped the list with $98.5 million, followed by the National Older Worker Career Center at $90.6 million, the National Senior Citizens Education and Research Center ($74 million), the National Caucus and Center on Black Aged ($72 million) and the National Association of Hispanic Elderly ($43.9 million).

The grants, created by Congress, cover the workers' pay and benefits as well as the groups' costs for arranging the employment.

Larry Anderson ran the seniors program for AARP until the senior lobby dropped out, and he now works for the Career Center. He said workers 55 and older were recruited for EPA jobs ranging from clerk to scientist, but few earned more than $30,000 a year.

"This allows the EPA to get experienced people while educating their managers on the value of younger people and older people working together," Anderson said.

Many of EPA's grants have been awarded without competition and left to the discretion of agency employees, the agency's internal watchdog has found.

In a scathing report last May, the inspector general said the EPA was unable to justify its award of more than $1 billion in noncompetitive grants in the 2000 fiscal year alone. The figure included awards to nonprofits plus grants to state and local governments.

There were "implications of preferential treatment in the selection of grantees," the report said.

It said EPA officials justified no-bid grants by calling recipients "uniquely qualified." The designation was "based solely on the project officers' beliefs, without any documented proof that no other organizations were able to perform the desired work," the report concluded.

Howard Corcoran, director of the EPA's grants office, said changes are being made to increase competitive bidding beginning Oct. 1. "The agency has become much more sensitive since (the report) of the need for competition in grants," he said.

Corcoran added, however, that some projects with titles that sound trivial to some people in fact are important to protecting the environment.

"I understand pesticides in golf courses are a big problem," Corcoran said, addressing the agency's more than $300,000 in awards for the golf course research.