A cargo diversion triggered by a four-week labor dispute at C&H Sugar's Crockett refinery has put raw sugar alongside coal and petroleum at Richmond's Levin terminal, prompting calls for a health investigation. The Contra Costa County Health Department has not yet issued findings.

A cargo diversion triggered by a four-week labor dispute at C&H Sugar's Crockett refinery has prompted a Richmond city official to call for a public health investigation after raw sugar was photographed stored at an industrial terminal alongside coal and petroleum products.

The storage arrangement at the Levin Richmond Terminal is a direct consequence of a strike by approximately 100 warehouse workers represented by ILWU Local 6, which began June 15, 2026. With maritime workers in ILWU Local 10 declining to cross the picket line at the Crockett facility in solidarity, C&H Sugar diverted incoming shipments — including cargo from the vessel Tai Herald, which sat anchored in San Francisco Bay since the strike's first day — to the Levin terminal instead.

Richmond City Councilmember Claudia Jimenez, speaking to ABC7 News, said city staff observed sugar stored on the ground at the site. "Sugar, which is a food product, is being dumped here next to coal and petroleum products," she said, adding that uncovered coal piles at the terminal create potential cross-contamination risk on windy days. The city contacted the Contra Costa County Health Department to investigate. As of July 9 no official findings or public statements from the health department had been issued, and C&H Sugar's parent, ASR Group, had not publicly addressed the specific storage conditions at Levin.

C&H told ABC7 in a general statement: "In terms of quality, there is no difference in using this terminal instead of ours. Raw sugar is not food grade until" processed — a qualifier the company relied on to dismiss the concerns, but one that doesn't settle what happens to raw sugar that absorbs coal dust before it reaches the refinery.

The underlying strike is the first at the Crockett facility since 2003 — and the core fight is a familiar one. C&H, owned by ASR Group (approximately $1.6 billion in 2025 revenue, per ILWU.org), proposed eliminating retiree healthcare for roughly 100 retired and pre-2008 workers nearing retirement, shifting overtime calculations from a daily 8-hour threshold to a weekly 40-hour threshold — which the union says could cut some workers' pay by up to 50% — and reducing paid sick leave from 10 to 5 days annually. The company's offer included a 2% signing bonus and a claimed 20% wage increase over five years.

ILWU Local 6 Secretary-Treasurer Jose Nunez offered the union's bottom line: "We are out on strike until C&H Sugar agrees to come back to the bargaining table to negotiate in good faith," per ILWU.org. ASR Group VP of Corporate Relations Peter C. O'Malley offered the standard counterpoint in a statement to the Vallejo Sun — "an open and constructive dialogue" toward "long-term sustainability" — while the company hired replacement workers and General Manager Hitesh Modgil sent striking employees a letter offering a $1,000 return-to-work bonus.

On June 26, ILWU Local 6 filed unfair labor practice charges with NLRB Region 32 in Oakland, alleging bad-faith bargaining, premature impasse declaration, and unlawful termination of strikers; no hearing date has been set.

What remains open: whether the Contra Costa County Health Department finds actual contamination risk at Levin — the answer matters both for the sugar headed to grocery shelves and for whether C&H's workaround amounts to a reasonable business continuity move or something more adversarial. The NLRB investigation, the next round at the bargaining table, and the health department's findings are the three things to watch. In 2003, the Crockett workers struck to protect the same retiree benefits; that dispute ended in a settlement. Whether this one follows the same arc — or hardens before it resolves — is still to be determined.