Cote Blanche is a place located in St. Mary

St. Mary Parish, Louisiana

St. Mary Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The parish seat is Franklin. As of 2000, the population was 53,500.The Morgan City Micropolitan Statistical Area includes all of St. Mary Parish.-Geography:...

 parish

Parish

A parish is a territorial unit historically under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest, who might be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates - also priests but not the parish priest - from a more or less central parish church with its associated organization...

, Louisiana

Louisiana

Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It is an "island" or an elevated mound rising about 25 meters above the surrounding Holocene

Holocene

The Holocene is a geological epoch which began at the end of the Pleistocene and continues to the present. The Holocene is part of the Quaternary period. Its name comes from the Greek words and , meaning "entirely recent"...

 coastal marshes at the shore of Vermillion Bay, which in turn opens onto the Gulf of Mexico

Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico is a partially landlocked ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. In...

. Its name comes from the French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 Côte Blanche, meaning "White Coast."

Cote Blanche has an important salt dome

Salt dome

A salt dome is a type of structural dome formed when a thick bed of evaporite minerals found at depth intrudes vertically into surrounding rock strata, forming a diapir....

s that are mined by North American Salt Company, a subsidiary of Compass Minerals International

Compass Minerals

Compass Minerals is a leading producer of minerals, including salt, sulfate of potash specialty fertilizer, and magnesium chloride. Based in the Kansas City metropolitan area, the company provides bulk treated and untreated highway deicing salt to customers in North America and the United Kingdom...

. The Cote Blanche mine produces about 9 tons of salt

Salt

In chemistry, salts are ionic compounds that result from the neutralization reaction of an acid and a base. They are composed of cations and anions so that the product is electrically neutral...

every minute.