Dave Andrews releases a trout into Thorn Creek near Winters Road Bridge in Penn Township.

Three of the 45 environmental education grants awarded Friday by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection will be spent in Butler County.

The DEP announced $205,000 in awards statewide.

In Butler County, they'll fund programming at the Zelienople Area Public Library, the Butler Area School District and Lutherlyn Camp.

The latter two projects are continuations of years-old programs. The Butler project is the ongoing “Trout in the Classroom” program, a fishery management program organized by Intermediate High School teacher Dave Andrews. Andrews' classes have ongoing restoration and ecological development projects in the works at Thorn Creek.

The class ecology projects received about $2,600 out of this grant cycle, according to the DEP.

The Lutherlyn grant is going to the North Hills School District in Allegheny County. The $3,000 grant will fund field trips for fourth- and sixth-graders in the school district.

Todd Garcia-Bish, Lutherlyn's director of environmental education, said this is their 30th year of offering such programs for various school districts in the area. They take classes into nature for lessons on topics like stream ecosystems and geology.

“Part of our mission here at Lutherlyn is to teach people to take care of the Earth, so that's what we're trying to do,” Garcia-Bish said.

The camp in Connoquenessing Township also hosts students from the Butler Area School District, the Karns City Area School District, Seneca Valley School District and St. Luke's Lutheran School, to name a few.

The Zelienople program is the only truly new effort of the trio. At the library, according to their grant application, they're launching a new monthly program called “Make a Difference” for children ages 7 through 12. They plan on using some of the $3,000 they received to bring in guest speakers with environmental and sustainability expertise.

“The ultimate outcome in starting this group is that the children of the next generation will be made aware of problems facing our world, and to give them the confidence and room to explore ways to combat those problems,” the grant application reads. “Ideally, at the end of each session, each child will have a tangible project to take home that will help combat an environmental problem.”

The library plans to begin the program in July, according to the application. They regularly publish information on their programming both on their Facebook page and on zelienoplelibrary.org. Staff members were unavailable for comment Friday, as the library was closed.