The images of oil-soaked birds and other animals were burned on my brain as a kid in 1989, when the Exxon Valdez spill happened in Alaska's Prince William Sound. Those desperate, tragic pictures made a big impression on me at a young age, and I carry them with me today in the work that I do. (The AP photo that ran with the Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog post today is a perfect example.)

But while I was taking in the images from the TV screen and pages of magazines 20 years ago today, our ocean initiative director, Sarah Chasis, was doing something about it.

As OnEarth magazine reported, Sarah was fighting for better oil tanker regulations at the federal level to prevent future Exxon Valdez-like catastrophes. And she took the battle to the courtroom in the early 1990s, when she filed suit against the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to get ships like Exxon Valdez, which can easily lead to spills if they are involved in collisions, out of our waters in accordance with the Oil Pollution Act. Her actions even led her to receive the first-ever Coastal Steward of the Year Award from NOAA in 1992.

Today, there is another culprit raising the risks of oil spills even closer to home - just off our beaches, up and down the East and West Coasts. That culprit is new offshore drilling, after the nearly 30-year-old moratorium on this kind of drilling was lifted in the waning months of the Bush Administration last fall.

Over the years, Sarah and the Natural Resources Defense Council have also steadfastly fought to keep the moratorium on offshore drilling in place during the three decades it protected us from the consequences of drilling so close to our shores - but the protections were finally lifted. And that's bad news if you don't want to worry about spills at your favorite beach.

Just think: if the Exxon Valdez spill had happened on the East Coast, it would have extended from Massachusetts to North Carolina.

Oil drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf is still pouring thousands of gallons of oil into our oceans every year. In fact, as storms and hurricanes have intensified, the number of OCS oil spills has increased. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita alone resulted in 125 spills of petroleum products from platforms, rigs, and pipelines on the OCS, totaling 685,000 gallons

Not only does this spell tragedy for most fish and other marine species, spills are expensive - financial repercussions could be drastic for our $32 billion commercial fishing and $60 billion ocean and coastal tourism and recreation industries. And according to the National Academy of Sciences, cleanup methods can only remove a small fraction of oil spilled in marine waters. Do I need to even mention that while we risk these environmental and economic nightmares, new drilling won't even have a significant impact on gas prices...?

The 20 year anniversary should remind us that we cannot drill our way to lower gas prices or energy independence. The time has come to invest in a clean energy that will jumpstart our economy, create jobs and give us energy security.

You can support the work Sarah Chasis and the NRDC are doing by visiting us here: http://www.nrdc.org/joingive/.