INSIDE SCOOP

-- Compiled by Daily Pilot staff

Would the thought of a man wandering through the White House and

Capitol Hill with an unidentified purple box full of circuits and wires

scare you? It scares Newport Beach Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff. And

he was the guy.

On a trip to the nation’s capital last month, Kiff brought a prototype

of the WeatherTrak device, a satellite-controlled “brain” for home

irrigation systems that could prove to be a near panacea for local

water-quality and water-conservation issues.

Kiff’s fast-paced tour of D.C. included a private group tour of the

West Wing, meetings with representatives of all levels of government,

including staff of Sen. Barbara Boxer, meeting with staff of the U.S.

Environmental Protection Agency and other hard-hitting federal agencies.

And, everywhere he went, his purple WeatherTrak device was in tow.

When Kiff came home, he wrote in the weekly newsletter to City Council

members that he could not believe “how that darn Purple Box got through

every security screening every time without a question. You’d think that

a little device with wires, an antenna and computer chips would at least

cause them to look at it and ask me what it was -- no one did.”