PORTLAND – A group of residents on Tuesday delivered 700 postcards and a letter signed by 50 business owners demanding an end to the practice of using pesticides on city sidewalks.

Portland Pesticide Watch has taken the Portland Public Works Department to task for using Roundup to kill weeds in the city’s brick sidewalks. The group wants city workers to use less toxic means of killing weeds.

“As a Portland citizen, I am outraged,” said Josh Cook of Portland. “Why put our children’s health and the environment unnecessarily at risk?”

Public works employees already cut the use of pesticide spraying by 50 percent this year. The Portland Pesticide Watch wants the Public Works Department to ban pesticides altogether.