BATON ROUGE – Continuing to address the needs of south Louisiana residents in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program will host a seminar on reducing risks from coastal hazards on Oct. 17.

Dennis Hwang, an internationally recognized coastal zone management expert and attorney from Hawaii, will be the featured speaker.

The program, one component in the Presidents’ Forum on Meeting Coastal Challenges, begins at 8:30 a.m. in the Energy, Coast and the Environment building auditorium on the LSU campus.

The school is located just south of Tiger Stadium, off the Nicholson Drive Extension. Admission is free, and the seminar is open to the public. Those planning to attend are asked to RSVP to LisaS@lsu.edu by Oct. 14.

Hwang, who has been working in the field of coastal zone management for more than 20 years, is the author of the Hawaii Coastal Hazard Mitigation Guidebook.

He is also a member of a team working on the recovery and rebuilding of Indonesia following the December 2004 tsunami, and he is working with the government of Indonesia on strategies for recovery and natural hazard mitigation.

His Oct. 17 talk at LSU is titled “Coastal Hazards Mitigation: Models for Katrina and Rita Recovery.” Other panelists providing a Louisiana perspective on coastal mitigation planning include Don Davis, Administrator, Governor’s Applied Coastal Research and Development Program; Rod Emmer, President of the Louisiana Chapter of the Association of State Floodplain Managers; and Al Levron, Terrebonne Parish Director of Public Works. A question and answer session will follow the discussion.

Information about the Presidents’ Forum can be found at www.laseagrant.org.