CALIFORNIA ALBUM : Trying to Hold Back Tide, Time : Homeowner refuses to throw in the towel in Del Mar’s attempt to demolish his seawall, which has been declared illegal.

Just a few hundred yards from the picturesque Del Mar Racetrack, a galloping controversy threatens to overtake a seawall and a patio on the ocean side of Jack and Angela Scott’s $1-million beach house.

The city is poised to demolish the wood-beam structures, which jut out onto the white strip of sand that has made Del Mar a favorite playground for Southern California’s well-to-do and celebrity set.

But even as the city arranges for bulldozers, the Scotts show no signs of surrender.

“Why wouldn’t we try to protect our home?” Angela Scott asked.

Many of her neighbors have already given up the fight to save their seawalls, buckling under the weight of an issue that has consumed the political passions of locals for 20 years. While homeowners claim that the walls are needed to protect their expensive homes from storm damage, local activists view the structures as symbols of Del Mar’s elite trying to block public access to the beach.

The tony strip of designer houses running along the sand have served as getaway spots for a wide variety of movers and shakers, ranging from Robert Strauss, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, to the late Desi Arnaz. For decades, property owners have used rocks, ground cover, concrete walls and patios to protect their homes from waves that lap at their property every few years.

Although narrow roads and lack of parking keep beach-going crowds down most of the year, each summer this stretch of beach fills with tourists, some of them in town for the annual meeting of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club and the Del Mar Fair.

For years, they have tossed their towels on the walls and leaned chairs against the rocks. The seawalls and patios seemed as much a part of the beach as lifeguards and seaweed, even if they were a constant source of irritation to local activists.

In 1988, after a bitter campaign, city voters overwhelmingly passed the Beach Preservation Initiative, making it illegal for beachfront properties to have protective structures more than five feet west of a boundary roughly concurrent to property lines.

Beachfront residents filed nine lawsuits challenging the initiative and the city’s right to enforce it. However, in each case, either the courts backed the public’s right to use the beach or the landowners capitulated to the city’s demands.

One by one, the seawalls have been tumbling down.

In April, the council ordered the Scotts and six of their neighbors to tear down their seawalls by Friday. City-hired contractors would do it at the owners’ expense if they refused.

Jack Scott said his attorney will seek an injunction to halt the city’s actions, and he will continue to fight “until the courts tell us we have no rights.”

To the Scotts, the issue is a simple matter of protecting their home. They have owned the house since 1968, using it primarily as a summer home and renting it out the rest of the year.

Like most beachfront residents, the Scotts fear a repeat of the storms of 1978 and 1983, which sent waves crashing through the windows of many homes.

Local activists argue that beachfront residents are merely stalling so they can enjoy their patios for another summer.

“In reality, what we have is a small group of overprivileged people abusing the general public’s rights,” longtime activist Bud Emerson wrote in a recent newspaper column.

The removal of the seawalls from the seven properties alone will return a strip of sand totaling about a quarter of an acre to public use, said Del Mar planner Monica Tuchscher. Already, expanses of sand as wide as 20 feet have been opened up for volleyball players, surfers and tourists who flock to the area.

“The first time I went down and saw how it looked (after structures had been removed), I almost fell over. I couldn’t believe how good it looked,” said Dwight Worden, an attorney for the city.