The wastewater collection and water distribution systems in the United States are deteriorating at an alarming rate. The ever-growing need for rehabilitation and replacement of these systems led to the birth of a research program by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Innovation and Research for Water Infrastructure for the 21st Century, which focused on addressing the water infrastructure needs. There is a need to responsively manage energy and environmental resources, which calls for the use of evaluation tools to compare competing alternatives with a view of adopting the most environmental friendly alternative. This paper gives an overview of the Environmental Value Engineering (EVE) methodology which evaluates the environmental impact and contribution of built alternatives in terms of solar emergy through ten phases of a project’s life cycle. Emergy, a measure of real wealth, is defined as the sum of the available energy of one kind previously required directly or indirectly through input pathways to make a product or service (Odum 2000). The paper also gives results of an EVE analysis of horizontal directional drilling (HDD) versus open-cut construction during a pressurized water mains installation process.