The emails are only those sent to or from the governor, not those sent between members of his administration. That is unacceptable. He needs to release every email that might shed light on how this calamity developed, and who was responsible. Even Wednesday’s limited release shows an appalling lack of urgency in responding to Flint’s water problems and a determination to blame the city for the crisis.

For example, various emails showed that state officials dismissed one group of critics as being an “anti-everything group” and accused others of trying to turn the issue of children’s exposure to lead into a “political football.” Virtually everyone in the city knew that there were problems with the Flint River water, which smelled bad, was an odd color, caused skin rashes in some people and led to several advisories from the state to boil the water before drinking it.

Flint’s City Council voted 7 to 1 in March 2015 to “do all things necessary” to return to purchasing clean water from Detroit, only to have the emergency manager at the time veto the measure as “incomprehensible” because he considered the water safe and believed it was more important to save money than to respond to the pleas of Flint residents.

Although state officials insisted that their data showed no serious lead problems in Flint, the released emails suggest otherwise. They reveal that the state’s Department of Environmental Quality ignored warnings from an expert from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, who said in early 2015 that the state was testing the water in a way that could profoundly understate the lead levels.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and demonstrators in Michigan have called for Mr. Snyder to resign. Several state officials have already resigned, including the director of the state Department of Environmental Quality and his chief spokesman, and the governor’s chief of staff and chief spokeswoman.