Farmers fear floods are coming as Hume Dam water release increases

"It's certainly a good idea to do this but it should have been done a month ago," Murray River Action Group chair Richard Sargood said.

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) recently raised the dam releases to create more airspace due to higher than average storage levels for July. Hume and Dartmouth dams are currently at 97 per cent capacity.

MDBA senior director river management Joe Davis said "releases from Hume Dam are currently targeting 25,000 ML/day at Doctors Point but could safely be increased to around 32,000 ML/day in the coming days to gain airspace ahead of predicted rainfall."

But Mr Sargood said "the horse has already bolted."

"They had plenty of channel capacity a month ago and if they did it then they didn't need to flood anybody," he said.

"But there's flooding around Corowa now, there's local flooding all the way between Hume and Yarrawonga and it's going to make flooding worse down below Yarrawonga by the time the Ovens gets chucked in."

Mr Sargood criticised the MDBA for allowing the dams to reach such high levels.

"Dartmouth is 98 per cent full," he said.

"If we get the 30 to 50mm of rain that's predicted this weekend, then we could see a repeat of the flooding we got last year."

Fellow riverside farmer John Fowler is having nightmares of last year's flood.

"I had to get my cattle out for four months last year because of the flood, which was man-made," he said.

"And this is a man-made flood again. We're pulling out pumps and getting ready to shoot cattle again because the weir is letting out so much water and the river is going to flood."

Mr Fowler said he's been watching the river rise for weeks and now he fears it's at breaking point.

"To give you an example, at about the 10th to 12th of June, the river was only 1.14m and the weir was 96 per cent.

"About 10 days ago when we started getting this solid rain, it went up to 2.4m and today it's 3.29m.

"It's going up nearly every hour - there's not enough room left on the land for the water they're letting out."

On Thursday, VicEmergency issued a "minor flood warning" for the Murray River downstream of Hume Dam to Tocumwal.

Further flood warnings have been raised for the Ovens, King, Kiewa and Mitta rivers.