SAN DIEGO -- The city attorney said Tuesday he will ask a judge on Thursday to vacate a court order to disperse the seals from Children's Pool in La Jolla, now that the governor has signed a bill giving control of the beach back to the city.

On Monday, Superior Court Judge Yuri Hofmann ordered the city to comply with a previous court order and begin dispersing the seals from Children's Pool within 72 hours.

The fact that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hours later signed the legislation by Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, created a changed circumstance that Hoffman did not consider when he ordered the city to immediately disperse the seals, City Attorney Jan Goldsmith told reporters.

In addition to asking Hofmann to vacate his order, the city will ask the judge to schedule a hearing to determine whether the case should be dismissed, Goldsmith said.

"When Judge Hofmann made his orders in this case, he did not have a piece of legislation approved by the two policy-making branches of state government," the city attorney said. "We will take all legal means to return the decision-making on this back to the city council and end all this expensive and nonsensical litigation."

Goldsmith said the issue will not go away with shooing away the seals.

"It will go on and on and will drain our treasury of money that would otherwise be used to help us through these tough times," he said.

Goldsmith urged citizens to "calm down" and refrain from taking matters into their own hands.

He said Kehoe's legislation, SB 428, is intended to give the city -- as trustees of the beach on behalf of the state -- discretion to allow the seals to remain.

Goldsmith said the beach has always been owned by the state. In 1931, the state placed the tidelands area in a trust to be used as a children's pool and for other things, he said.

The area -- also known as Casa Beach -- was used as a children's pool from 1930 until the 1990s and the seal population increased over the years, causing frustrations to grow, Goldsmith said.

Valerie O'Sullivan filed suit in 2004 to return the beach to a swimming area, and in 2005, now-retired Judge William Pate issued an injunction ordering the city of San Diego to reconfigure the beach to its 1941 condition, meaning sand had to be dredged and the area had to be geographically reconfigured, according to Goldsmith.

Pate also ordered the city to eliminate pollutants that are unhealthful to swimmers and return the area to its use under the 1931 trust as a children's pool, Goldsmith said.

A state appeals court upheld Pate's decision, and in 2008 the city began environmental review of the area, the city attorney said.

"The dredging and reconfiguration is not something that will happen overnight," Goldsmith said. Before that could happen, the city would need environmental impact reports and approval from the state Coastal Commission.

"So it's a long process," Goldsmith said. "You can shoo the seals away tomorrow, (but) we're still facing years and years of litigation."

Goldsmith said it will cost millions of dollars to dredge and reconfigure the beach.

"Our goal is to end the litigation and restore the decision-making to the city council," he said. "The state of California -- the owner of this land since the 1850s -- has now indicated intent that the city, as trustee, should have discretion."

On Monday, Assistant City Attorney for Civil Litigation Andrew Jones told Hofmann that the city would rely on an acoustical system using the sounds of barking dogs to shoo the seals away from the beach.

The Children's Pool is protected by a sea wall built through a gift by the late philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps.

Jones said the dog-barking plan to rid the beach of the seals -- at a cost of an estimated $688,000 -- would require a person walking up and down the beach to make sure the animals are gone.

If the effort to rid the area of seals does go ahead, officials are apparently concerned that demonstrators could show up. Jones said police officers will be on notice in case people who are against the dispersal plan cause any problems.

Paul Kennerson, the attorney for O'Sullivan, said Monday that the time for the city to act is now.

"If the city of San Diego had done what is was supposed to do from 1930 to 1994, when this problem started building up -- for a very few dollars -- the damage would not have been done, the beach would not have been fouled, the place would have been preserved in the state if was supposed to be preserved in," Kennerson said. "The city has to obey the law."

Supporters of the seals have asked a federal appeals court to issue emergency injunction that would stop the city from dispersing the seals.

If Hofmann refuses to vacate his order, the city would appeal the case to a state appeals court, Jones said.