The environmental fight that played out inside the Supreme Court on Wednesday was unusual in many ways: It featured poop, a whopping $10 billion fine and one of the nation’s greenest cities — San Francisco — battling the Environmental Protection Agency over water pollution rules in a case that could reverberate beyond the Bay Area.

Lawyers for San Francisco told the court it was 'unfair and unworkable' to hold the city potentially liable for huge fines because of polluted water along Pacific beaches near the city.

The question of where and how San Francisco should measure its stormwater discharge was debated in the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday.