Sedgwick is pleased to announce that Douglas E. Wance will rejoin the firm's Commercial Practices Group as special counsel in our Orange County office. He has built a cross-disciplinary practice involving land use, water resources, environmental compliance and natural resources through the representation of public agencies, as well as corporate and nonprofit clients. He has successfully represented private developers, corporations, nonprofits, and public agencies in large-scale acquisitions, developments and projects involving sophisticated financial, real estate, water resource, environmental compliance and land development matters. Many of the projects Wance has worked on include multimillion-dollar developments as well as multimillion-dollar and billion-dollar acquisitions of facilities and ongoing concerns within California.ance also has experience representing cities and water agencies as general and special counsel by providing advice on local agency governance and operations. He currently serves as the general counsel to the Central Basin Municipal Water District.
Wance's land development and litigation background includes representing residential developers, public entities, major industrial facilities, corporations and other commercial businesses in all phases of project development before local and state agencies, city councils and county board of supervisors. He has assisted clients in obtaining development and environmental permits and project approvals for power plants, as well as mixed use, school and industrial development projects. Further, he has provided advice on issues concerning the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), state and federal Endangered Species Act, the Subdivision Map Act, wetlands and entitlements. He also has participated in administrative proceedings and successfully litigated the defense of permits and CEQA approvals in trial and appellate courts.
Wance’s water resource work encompasses water quality and wetlands permitting, water rights acquisition, groundwater basin adjudication, conservation and conjunctive use, and water supply planning. Further, he has worked on many water projects encompassing a variety of water sources (surface, stormwater, groundwater, recycled), transmission, storage and distribution of water resources. He has provided advice and counsel to corporate interests regarding water disputes between states in the Pacific Northwest, the acquisition of water rights throughout California, and the securing and distribution of groundwater in the Southwest.
His environmental litigation, compliance and permitting background includes representing solid waste disposal facilities, electrical power plants, gasoline refineries and manufacturing facilities in environmental permitting and compliance matters. He has represented his clients' interests before U.S. EPA, the State Water Resources Control Board, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, and the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board. He has provided compliance counseling, spill reporting, due diligence reviews, permitting, variances, appeals and enforcement action resolutions for clients with hazardous substance, air and water quality concerns. Finally, he has participated in litigation to defend clients against alleged violation of state and federal environmental laws.
He received his J.D. from Boston College School of Law (1999) and his B.A. at the University of Southern California (1996).