State lawmakers met yesterday with an Army official who discussed World War II-era chemical weapons dumped in the ocean off O'ahu.

Addison Davis IV, deputy assistant secretary of the Army, spent nearly an hour at the state Capitol explaining the military program of dumping excess chemical weapons in the Atlantic and Pacific after World War II. He was speaking to a joint meeting of the Senate Committee on Education and Military Affairs and the House Committee on Public Safety and Military Affairs.

The Army has taken the lead in trying to catalog its program of dumping munitions into the ocean in an attempt to verify what was dumped, where it was dumped and when, Davis said. Officials also are trying to determine how various chemical weapons, such as blister agents mustard gas and lewisite, react in salt water, including how they disperse.

Davis called the meeting part of an ongoing dialogue.

"This is your home," Davis said. "This is where you live and we are in fact concerned about that. We don't want to come here with a recommendation without getting your thoughts."

Most of what he said about Hawai'i has been reported by the media in recent weeks.

More than 8,000 tons of chemical weapons were dumped off Pearl Harbor and the Wai'anae coast in 1944 and 1945, according to an Army report released in 2001.

Rep. Maile Shimabukuro, D-45th (Wai'anae, Makaha, Makua), and others at the meeting felt a bit shortchanged.

"I thought there would be more information," she said. "And I thought there would be more time. I'm glad he said on the record that he would come back and that he would meet with me in Wai'anae. We need full disclosure. What are they going to do to eliminate the danger?"

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.