Gov. Butch Otter said he's pleased that the federal government is poised to store thousands of tons of mercury in Texas rather than in Idaho Falls.

"It’s too soon to declare victory here," Otter said in a news release, "but I’m pleased to see that the Energy Department is moving toward a storage site other than Idaho.” Otter said in his State of the State speech this month that storing the mercury at the Idaho National Laboratory would have been "a misguided federal decision."

Locations in five other states, including Washington and Nevada, are still being considered by the U.S. Department of Energy to store the toxic elemental mercury, which is a byproduct of gold mining and some manufacturing processes.

Read Otter's news release at his website, an AP story on the preliminary decision not to store the mercury in Idaho Falls at KTVB or the Department of Energy's draft recommendations for mercury storage.