Ubuntu and Apache

I know this is not quite on topic but I do not know where else to turn. I needed to reinstall ubuntu and now I cannot change myself to be the owner of var www. I had been able to change myself to the owner of it and create, delete and modify any files I wanted before I had to reinstall. Now it seems the change is not taking effect. What happens is I use the sudo chown command and it shows that I am the owner. I have a script that creates a file when I go to the page and it creates a file and has www-data as the owner, not me. What am I doing wrong? Thanks, Brian