LANSING, Mich. — Gov. Rick Snyder’s newest release of state emails and documents related to Flint’s water disaster appears to indicate that his aides’ reluctance to brief him, his own mismanagement — or both — led to delays in addressing the public health threat.

A full year before his administration helped the city reconnect to Lake Huron water after lead contamination was exposed, two top advisers were already advocating the move, citing E. coli and a General Motors plant’s rusting parts. Snyder’s chief legal counsel even told the chief of staff that using Flint River water was “downright scary.”

Yet the Republican governor insists those specific warnings — weeks before his re-election — were never given directly to him, and state officials decided then that it would cost too much to rejoin Detroit’s system.

With documents revealing such discussions in Snyder’s inner circle, even the governor’s allies acknowledge how badly the issue seems to have been handled.

“The right people were raising the right issues, they were sounding the alarms,” said John Truscott, a public relations strategist who was the spokesman for former GOP Gov. John Engler. “Why wasn’t it followed through on?”

Snyder has apologized but refused to resign over his administration’s role in the water crisis. The tainted water has left children with elevated lead levels. He has also reassigned top spokespeople and fired regulators that a task force concluded were responsible for not deploying corrosion controls after the April 2014 switch, which let lead leach from aging pipes into some homes.