WASHINGTON - People who live near eight chemical weapons depots want the Army to place high-tech infrared monitors outside the facilities to detect leaks or releases and provide an early warning.

Craig Williams, executive director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, an umbrella organization based in Berea, Ky., said Tuesday that the existing 1980s-era technology lacks alarms for immediately warning people of a release. Those devices are now taken to a lab twice a day for analysis, he said.

"It can be up to 12 hours before you even know an agent has been released," Williams said. "The new monitors can do that in 10 to 15 seconds."

In March, a routine check of a monitor near a depot in Anniston, Ala., showed that a nerve agent was detected in the atmosphere around the site. But there was no way to know exactly when a chemical release might have occurred, Williams said.

Jeff Lindblad, a spokesman for the Army's Chemical Materials Agency, said the existing monitoring system is working well and that the technology sought by Williams' group does not always detect small releases.

The activists put the cost of the new infrared monitors at all eight plants at $25 million.

Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., is seeking to include $2 million in this year's Defense Department spending bill for a new monitoring system at the Army's Bluegrass depot in Richmond, Ky.

Williams said Congress should appropriate enough money to also install them at Anniston and six other sites: Aberdeen, Md; Newport, Ind.; Pine Bluff, Ark; Pueblo, Colo.; Toole, Utah, and Umatilla, Ore.

Nerve gas and mustard, a blistering agent, are stockpiled at the depots. The Army is slowly destroying the weapons to comply with an international agreement. That work is supposed to be completed by 2012.

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Chemical Materials Agency: http://www.cma.army.mil/

Chemical Weapons Working Group: http://www.cwwg.org/