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California’s current drought crisis isn’t going away any time soon, and state authorities have cast their nets far and wide looking for any way of conserving what little water they have left. Now California Governor Jerry Brown has unveiled new details of a plan for two huge pipes, powered by gravity, to improve the flow of water around the Sunshine State.

The major infrastructure project is called the California Water Fix, and it turns the current system on its head.

Six Northern California Democrats are breaking from Gov. Jerry Brown to demand a vote on his proposed tunnels to send water to Southern California. Democratic Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman of Stockton said Friday that she’ll introduce a bill to ask voters about the $15.5 billion project.

The Democratic governor has proposed building two massive tunnels in the San Joaquin Delta to supply residents and farmland further south.

The recent onslaught of El Nino storms only slightly increased the levels of California reservoirs that now stand at half of historic depths for this time of year, federal officials said Friday while releasing an initial water outlook for 2016.

The federally operated reservoirs that supply farms and cities throughout the agriculture-rich Central Valley are now 49 percent full, compared with 47 percent on Oct. 1, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said.

With January more than half over and the much-hyped dousing of southern California by El Nino-related storms nowhere to be seen, weather experts are urging patience.

The smattering of short-lived El Nino-driven storms that hit California in early January were actually ahead of schedule, experts told the Los Angeles Times this week. In previous El Nino years, the majority of the rainfall has occurred in February, March, and even April and May.

There’s a run on umbrellas, people are flocking to the slopes and the big wave surfers are celebrating the swells.

There’s been nearly a dozen days of rain in Northern California already this month and more is to come in the upcoming days and weeks. This is great for skiers, farmers and water users but the rain is hardly the end of the four-year dry spell. State water managers say California’s snowpack needs to be at 150 percent of normal on April 1 to signal an end to drought.