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Using the author’s own figures, what this really boils down to is that by bypassing the Glen Canyon Dam, draining Lake Powell, and sending more water to Lake Mead, considering both Lake Mead and Lake Powell: Roughly 50,000 acre-feet of water seepage (into the aquifer mostly) and evaporation would be saved. (More than 50k would be “saved” at Lake Powell, but losses at a fuller Lake Mead partially offset the savings at Lake Powell.)

However, some of the seepage returns to the system further downriver, and some of it helps sustain the aquifer and wells tapping into it, arguably reducing direct demands on the surface system. I’m going to guess the evaporation and seepage figures are for the reservoirs when reasonably full.

So... as a guess but a conservative one (of course!), the true savings might be around 35,000 acre-feet per year. That’s not really THAT much water.

Let’s analyze it in terms of comparison with the Ohio River at it’s confluence with the Mississippi River, and, to throw in an additional limitation, let’s say the Ohio can only sustain water being diverted from it 100 days a year.

35,000 acre-feet in 100 days is 350 acre-feet / day = 431,718 m^3 / day = 5 m^3 / second.

AVERAGE flow of the Ohio River at it’s confluence with the Mississippi River is estimated at 7,960 m^3 /s.

Also note that Saudi Arabia’s desalinization plant at Ras Al Khair, Saudi Arabia, cranks out 1,036,000 m^3/day.

https://www.aquatechtrade.com/news/desalination/worlds-largest-desalination-plants/

Other sources state the plant at al-Jubail makes over 1.4 million cubic meters of water daily:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-water-desalination-idUSKBN26Y1HD

Considering the significant benefits of Lake Powell, this is a solvable problem and the solutions are in CA. The upper watershed managers should tell the lower watershed managers just that.